
Class 

Copiglrt]^^ 

C0Pm?GHT DEPOSm 




HENRY IV. 
From a contemporary painting in museum at Versailles. 



v.. 



HENRY OF NAVARRE 



AND 



THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE 



-,BY^ 



P. F. WILLERT, M.A. 

v» 

i-ELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD 



" Truly your great enemy is the Spaniard. He is naturally so, he is 
aturally so throughout— by reason of that enmity that is in him against 
whatsoever is of God." — Oliver Cromwell. 



-\ 



G. P. PUTNx\M'S SONS 




NEW YORK 

27 WEST TWENTV-THIRU STREET 

i,hz ^nickcrbotkr f wgg 



LONDON 

24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND 



1893 



^-''> 



Copyright, 1893, by 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 

BY G. P. Putnam's Sons 



Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by 

XTbe TRincl?erbocl?er Ipress, IRew Jfforf? 

G. P, Putnam's Sons 




CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAUE 

I. — THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE — THE WARS 
OF RELIGION BEFORE THE DEATH OF 

CONDE (1512-1569) I 

II. THE PARENTAGE OF HENRY OF BOURBON 

HIS EDUCATION AND MARRIAGE ST. BAR- 
THOLOMEW — THE PEACE OF MONSIEUR 
(1555-1576) . . ■ • • -44 

III. — HENRY OF NAVARRE THE PROTECTOR OF 

THE CHURCHES (1576-1586) . . . HI 

IV.— THE THREE HENRYS (1585-1589) . . 149 

V. CAN A HERETIC BE KING OF FRANCE ? 

(1589-1592) .183 

VI. THE KING G0F:S TO MASS, AND ENTERS PARIS 

(1592-1595) 247 

VII. OPEN WAR WITH SPAIN PEACE WITH FOR- 
EIGN AND DOMESTIC ENEMIES THE EDICT 

OF NANTES (1595-1598) .... 292 
VIII. THE REORGANISATION OF THE MONARCHY 

(1598-1610) 347 

IX THE DIVORCE AND SECOND MARRIAGE OF 

THE KING (1598-1601) .... 378 



IV 



Contents. 



CHAPTER 

X. WAR WITH 



SAVOY SPANISH INTRIGUES 

CONSPIRACIES OF BIRON AND THE EN- 
TRAGUES (1599-1609) . . . , 

XL — COMPLICATIONS IN GERMANY PREPARA- 

•TIONS for war — ASSASSINATION OF THE 
KING (1609-1610) ..... 



GENEALOGICAL TABLES 
HOUSE OF LORRAINE 
HOUSE OK BOURBON-VENDOME 



. facing page 



399 

428 

464 
465 



INDEX 465 





HENRY OF NAVARRE 

AND THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE — THE WARS 
RELIGION BEFORE THE DEATH OF CONDE. 



O'F 



1 5 12-1569. 

RENCH historians, anxious to vindicate* 
in all things the priority of their na- 
tion, point out that in 1 5 12, five years 
before Luther denounced the sale of 
indulgences, Lefevre, a lecturer on 
theology and letters at Paris, published 
a commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul in which 
he taught the doctrine of justification by faith. 

But an isolated theologian might deny the efficacy 
of good works without danger to the established 
system, so long as the logical consequences of such 
doctrine were not pressed vigorously home against 

I 




2 Henry of Navarre, [1512- 

the abuses of Rome. Lefevre had nothing of the 
passionate activity of a successful reformer; his 
teaching produced Httle effect till the minds of 
men were stirred by the great events taking place 
in Germany. 

Lefevre and his friends did little more than give 
expression to the general desire that the Church 
should be reformed from within. They were sup- 
ported by the sympathy of the scholars and men of 
letters who had long been engaged in a bitter quarrel 
with the monkish pedants, to whom the system and 
the maxims of the schoolmen were not less sacred 
than the cardinal doctrines of the Church. 

The false renderings, the spurious documents, the 
historical frauds and obsolete philosophy, on which 
the Catholic theologians of the day relied, hardly 
allowed a learned man to be orthodox. 

But these cultivated men had not the fervour and 
their doctrine lacked the emphasis needed to stir 
popular enthusiasm ; the real impulse to the Refor- 
mation in France was given by men of more decided 
views, who at first, with the exception of Farel, a 
friend of Lefevre, belonged to a lower class. 

The growth of heresy did not escape the notice of 
the University of Paris, the acknowledged judge and 
champion of orthodoxy throughout Latin Christen- 
dom. In the 14th century the University had in- 
terfered in politics with the authority of a Fourth 
Estate and had lectured kings and princes. In the 
15th century at the Councils of Constance and Basle- 
its doctors had been the acknowledged leaders of the 
Western Church. As if foreseeing the approaching 



15691 The Reformation in France. 3 

struggle, the faculty of theology, the Sorbonne, as it 
was called from the name of the College founded by 
Lewis IX. for the support of the teachers of divinity, 
appointed a permanent committee to watch over the 
purity of the faith. 

Heresy was in France an offence against the Com- 
mon Law, and those accused of it were tried before 
the ordinary courts of justice ; but these courts 
never entered into the question of what constituted 
heresy, allowing the decision of the Sorbonne to be 
final on that point. Hence their function seemed to 
be little more than the punishment of whomsoever 
the theologians chose to pronounce guilty. 

In 1 52 1 the Sorbonne solemnly condemned the 
doctrines of Luther, declaring that they ought to be 
extirpated by fire and sword ; yet the new sectaries 
were little molested till after the fatal day of Pavia. 

Francis L was not sorry to have a convenient bug- 
bear wherewith to frighten the clergy. He was also 
disposed to toleration by more worthy motives, by 
the influence of his sister Margaret, and by his un- 
feigned sympathy with letters and culture, the best 
trait in a character which has been saved from well 
deserved infamy by the gratitude of the Muses. 
But when the King was captive in Spain the Regent, 
his mother, was anxious to secure the co-operation 
of the Pope and clergy in her efforts for his libera- 
tion, and the heretics, who it was said had drawn 
down the wrath of heaven on their country, had a 
foretaste of the severities which awaited them. 
Lewis de Berquin a young man of great promise, a 
scholar and a courtier, was thrown into prison, al- 



4 Henry of Navarre. WbM- 

though a favourite of the King. On the return of 
Francis, Berquin was released. Erasmus, whose Col- 
loquies had been condemned by the Sorbonne, was 
invited to Paris, but preferred to revenge himself on 
his opponents by satire from a safe distance. He 
criticised a book published by Beda, the leader of 
the bigots of the University, and proved that that 
pillar of orthodoxy had been guilty of eighty lies, 
three hundred calumnies, forty-seven blasphemies. 
Lefevre now in his eightieth year, who had recently 
completed his translation of the New Testament 
into French, was recalled from Strasburg and ap- 
pointed tutor of the King's youngest son. The 
hopes of the reforming party ran high. Zwingli 
the most amiable and tolerant of the great fathers 
of the Reformation dedicated his book on true and 
false religion to the King of France. 

But the tide of court favour was already turning : 
the influence of Margaret over her brother was in the 
wane. The Chancellor Duprat, who aspired to the 
Papacy, and the King's favourite the Constable Anne 
of Montmorency, urged the repression of heresy. 
Yet Francis hesitated to sanction active persecution 
— when an event occurred which at once gave the 
preponderance to the fanatical party. 

One evening (June i, 1528) an image of the Virgin 
at a street corner in Paris was thrown down and 
mutilated. The whole town was in an uproar ; the 
numerous guilds formed in honour of Our Lady 
looked upon the outrage as a personal insult. The 
ignorant mob was infuriated by such sacrilege to their 
favourite deity, the better classes were alarmed by 



1569] The Reformation in France. 5 

this proof of the audacity of the sectaries, the King 
was indignant at an act which seemed an abuse of 
his indulgence and which was Hkely to provoke dis- 
order. For a whole week there were expiatory pro- 
cessions — processions of the University, of the clergy, 
of the King and his courtiers. The partisans of 
persecution triumphed, and Lewis de Berquin was 
one of their first victims. 

Henceforth the history of French Protestantism is 
that of an oppressed minority, never safe from legal 
persecution and from public and private violence, 
except when, from time to time, their own valour 
and resolution or political expediency obtained for 
them a partial and precarious respite. 

Persecution compelled the French Reformers to 
become a church militant, yet it may be doubted 
whether any organisation or discipline would have 
enabled them to increase their numbers and their 
influence during the remainder of the reign of Fran- 
cis I. and that of Henry H., exposed as they were 
to the rigour of the law and the hatred of the mob, 
had they not found a leader and an inexpugnable 
citadel — Calvin and Geneva. 

Calvin threw the doctrines of the French Reform- 
ers into the most definite and logical form possible 
— he organised their churches, his personal influence 
gave unity to their councils. 

Under the anagram of Alcuin, Calvin published 
in 1555, after he had fled from Paris to Basle, a book 
called Institution de la Religion Chretienne dedicated 
to Francis I. It professed to be an exposition of 
the doctrines of the Reformers, and to point out 



6 Henry of Navarre, [1512- 

how undeserving they were of persecution, and how 
untainted by all doctrines dangerous to society. In 
this book — amplified in later editions — Calvin laid 
the foundations of the religion of the Huguenots, 
of the Dutch, of the Scotch, of the Puritans in 
England and America, in short of the most heroic, 
the most militant and the most characteristic form 
of Protestantism. 

In the dogmatic part of the treatise Calvin does 
not originate, he only presses the doctrines of others 
to their logical conclusions. The fundamental dog- 
ma — justification by faith of those elected by grace 
— is borrowed from Luther and Lefevre. But Calvin 
draws from their premises the irrefutable conclusion, 
that those predestined to salvation by the certain 
foreknowledge of God must of necessity be saved. 
More original than his dogmatic theology was the 
combination by Calvin of views about church gov- 
ernment far more revolutionary than those of the 
Lutherans with the High Church doctrine of the 
independence of the Church and of its authority 
over the State. '' He saw," says a French historian, 
" the Church among the Lutherans fallen from the 
control of the Pope to that of the princes, and that 
the great maxim of Luther, ^ Every man is a priest,' 
was interpreted in practice to mean, ' Every prince 
is a Pope.' Even in Switzerland, where there were 
no princes, the magistrates took upon themselves to 
legislate for the Church, which appeared to be upon 
the point of becoming wholly merged in the State." 
Calvin endeavoured to secure her independence and 
spiritual authority. He insists upon the importance 



1569] The Reformation in France, 7 

and power of the ministry, who are to be elected 
with the consent and approval of the people, the 
pastors presiding over the election. The Consistory, 
the assembly of ministers and elders, must admonish 
and censure all breaches of discipline and morality. 
The Church, as represented by this assemblage, has 
the power of the keys, the right of excommunication 
— surely an empty terror to the Elect ? There is no 
remission of sins for those who are outside the pale 
of Christ's Church, we must therefore beware of 
separating ourselves from it, because we may have 
been offended by some trifling imperfections. The 
true Church is that in which the Gospels are faith- 
fully and simply preached, in which the sacra- 
ments are administered according to the ordinance 
of Christ, as interpreted by Calvin, and in which 
new articles of faith are not devised ; those who 
separate themselves from the true Church, like the 
Anabaptists, those who adhere to a false church like 
the Papists, are alike apostates from the faith and 
irrevocably damned. 

It might be supposed that a careless despair, or a 
self-satisfied and inactive acquiescence in the con- 
viction of personal election would result from rigid 
predestinarianism. But this has not been the case. 
No doctrine has proved more capable of nerving 
men for great efforts, of sustaining them in moments 
of doubt and difificulty and isolation. The feeling 
that we are but the puppets, or the passive instru- 
ments of an- overruHng fate — identified with the 
Divine Will — has enabled the soldier to advance 
undaunted to a hopeless struggle, the reformer to 



8 Henry of Navarre. w^m- 

attack institutions which have the sanction of cen- 
turies, the martyr to believe in his cause amid the 
execration of a unanimous crowd. 

The Papacy had upheld monarchical principles in 
the Church. CEcumenical councils had asserted 
the authority of an hierarchical aristocracy. The 
constitution of Calvinism was representative and 
democratic. It is therefore natural that no other 
religious system should have shown itself so favour- 
able to political freedom. The struggles for liberty 
and constitutional government made by the Euro- 
pean nations during the i6th and 17th centuries 
are unmistakably connected with Calvinism. 
In the Netherlands, as in Scotland, the return 
of the Protestant exiles who had. taken refuge at 
Geneva was the signal for resistance to the excesses 
of arbitrary power. The English refugees who fled 
from the persecution of Mary Tudor became the 
founders of the great Puritan party. Nowhere — 
not evert at his own Geneva — were the principles of 
Calvin more energetically carried out than in New 
England, by the Pilgrim Fathers, the founders of 
the freest as well as the greatest repubHc the world 
is ever likely to see. 

In France, as elsewhere, the Calvinists were the 
opponents of despotism, the champions of popular 
government. That some historians should have 
failed to see this must be explained by the accident, 
that the prince whom the Huguenots recognised as 
their leader, happened to be the claimant of the 
throne by indefeasible hereditary right, so that his 
and their enemies naturally appealed to the elective 



1569] The Reformation in France. g 

and popular theory of sovereignty ; while their 
alliance with the populace of the big towns gave a 
spurious air of democracy to these defenders of the 
Papacy and clients of the Spanish tyrant. 

Calvin became the legislator, the acknowledged 
leader of the French Reformers, yet even Calvin 
could have effected little without Geneva. That 
little town, situated on the confines of three nation- 
alities and inhabited by a French-speaking popula- 
tion, was admirably adapted by its position to 
interpret the teaching of Germany and Switzerland 
to France. For a hundred years Geneva was the 
citadel of the Evangelical religion. There were the 
printing-presses which, as St. Francis de Sales com- 
plained, scattered their pestilential produce over all 
the world ; there was the Seminary, where the min- 
isters were trained who preached the Gospel to 
congregations assembled by stealth on desert moun- 
tain or heath, or in towns amid the more dangerous 
fanaticism of the crowd, whose least hazardous 
service was to invoke the blessing of heaven while 
they accompanied their flock into battle. There ex- 
iles and pilgrims from every part of Europe met and 
took council for the common interests of the Cause. 

The influence of Calvin and of his doctrines was 
needed to give the French Reformers the energy and 
the organisation which enabled them to sustain an 
unequal and unavoidable conflict ; yet that conflict 
was embittered, the issue enlarged and a compromise 
made impossible by the extreme and aggressive 
form assumed by French dissent. The majority of 
Englishmen who conformed with equal readiness to 



lo Henry of Navarre, [1512- 

the religion by law established under Mary Tudor 
or Elizabeth probably saw no essential difference 
between a service said in Latin or in English, but 
the most careless Gallio could not but perceive 
something more than a dissimilarity in forms be- 
tween the prayers in a Calvinist meeting-house and 
the ''idolatrous sacrifice " of the Mass. 

Francis I. had long shrunk from persecution, but 
having once begun he showed no further hesitation. 
During the remainder of his reign and the whole of 
that of his son Henry II. (1534-15 59) the cruelty of 
the sufferings inflicted on the Reformers increased 
with the number of the victims. At first they were 
strangled and burnt, then burnt alive, then hung in 
chains to roast over a slow fire. It was found that 
this last method of prolonging their agony gave 
them time to sing their psalms and to pray for their 
persecutors from the midst of the flames. Even the 
stupid ferocity of the mob might be touched ; it was 
therefore ordered that they should be gagged ; but 
the fire snapped the cords, the gag fell out and the 
ejaculations of the half-charred lips excited pity : it 
seemed a safer plan to cut out the tongues of the 
heretics before they were led to execution. 

The Edict of Chateaubriand ( 1 5 5 1 ), taking away all 
right of appeal from those convicted of heresy, was 
followed by an attempt to introduce an Inquisition 
on the model of that of Spain, and when this failed 
owing to the opposition of the lawyers, the Edict of 
Compiegne (1557) denounced capital punishment 
against all who in public or private professed any 
heterodox doctrine. 



1569] The Reformation in France, 1 1 

It is a commonplace that persecution avails noth- 
ing against the truth — that the true Church springs 
from the blood of martyrs. Yet the same cause 
which triumphed over persecution in France was 
crushed by it in Spain and in the Walloon Nether- 
lands. Was it therefore not the truth ? The fact 
would rather seem to be, that there is no creed, no 
sect which cannot be extirpated by force. But that 
it may prevail, persecution must be without respect 
of persons, universal, continuous, protracted. Not 
one of these conditions was fulfilled in France. The 
opinions of the greater nobles and princes, and of 
those who were their immediate followers, were not 
too narrowly scanned, nor was the persecution 
equally severe at all times and in all places. Some 
governors and judges and not a few of the higher 
clergy inclined to toleration. Sadolet, Bishop of 
Carpentras, protected the Vaudois, and Du Chatel 
of Macon saved for a time Stephen Dolet, the 
learned friend of Rabelais. ** Do you, a Catholic 
bishop, dare to defend a Lutheran and an atheist ? " 
asked the pitiless Cardinal Tournon. '' I am a bishop 
and I speak like a bishop," was the undaunted reply ; 
" but you — you play the hangman." At the worst 
the preachers of the Word found a sure refuge at 
Geneva, in the dominions of the Bourbons and at 
Montargis, where Renee of France, the Duchess of 
Ferrara, kept her court. 

The cheerful constancy of the French martyrs was 
admirable. Men, women and children walked to 
execution singing the psalms of Marot and the Song 
of Simeon, This boldness confounded their enemies. 



12 Henry of Navarre, \\^\i- 

Hawkers distributed in every part of the country the 
books issued from the press of Geneva and which it 
was a capital offence even to possess. Preachers 
taught openly in streets and market-places. One of 
these missionaries of the Gospel was asked when in 
prison, how it came that he laughed and rejoiced in 
the prospect of death, although our Saviour in His 
agony sweated blood and prayed that the cup might 
pass from Him ? Still smiling, he replied, '' Christ 
had taken upon Him all human infirmities and felt 
the bitterness of death, but I, who by faith possess 
such a blessing, the assurance of salvation, what can 
I but rejoice ? " Such men died in ecstasy, insensible 
to the diaboHcal ingenuity of the punishments in- 
flicted on them. The sight of sufferings thus 
endured could not be without an effect. More than 
one judge was stricken to death wath horror and 
remorse ; others embraced the faith of their victims. 
The executioner of Dijon proclaimed his conversion 
at the foot of the scaffold. 

The increasing numbers of their converts and the 
high position of some among them gave confidence 
to the Protestants. Delegates from the reformed 
congregations of France were on their way to Paris 
to take part in the deliberations of the first national 
Synod on the very day (April 2, 1559) when the 
peace of Cateau Cambresis was signed, a peace 
which was to be the prelude to a vigorous and con- 
certed effort to root out heresy on the part of the 
kings of France and Spain. The object of the 
meeting was twofold : first to draw up a detailed 
profession of faith, which was submitted to Calvin — 



1569] The Refor7naiion in France, 13 

there was, he said, .Httle to add, less to correct- 
secondly to determine the "ecclesiastical discipline" 
of the new Church. The ministers were to be chosen 
by the elders and deacons, but approved by the 
whole congregation. The affairs of each congrega- 
tion were placed under the control of the Consistory, 
a court composed of the pastors, elders and deacons ; 
more important matters were reserved for the deci- 
sion of the provincial '' colloques " or synods, which 
were to meet twice a year, and in which each church 
was represented by its pastor and at least one elder. 
Above all was the national Synod also composed of 
the clergy and of representative laymen. 

This organisation was thoroughly representative 
and popular, the elected delegates of the congrega- 
tions, the elders and deacons, preponderated in all 
the governing bodies, and all ministers and churches 
were declared equal. 

The Reformed churches, which although most nu- 
merous in the South spread over almost the whole 
country, are said at this time to have counted some 
400,000 members (1559). These were of almost all 
classes, except perhaps the lowest, although even 
among the peasantry there were some martyrs for 
the faith. Coligny truly said that the lowly had 
been the first to show the way of salvation to the 
rich and powerful ; the vast majority of the earliest 
converts belonged to the middle classes, the better 
educated artisans and traders and to the lower ranks 
of the professions ; but the upper classes had not 
been slow to follow. Little is proved by Michelet's 
assertion that he could find only three men of noble 



14 Henry of N avarice. Wb\l- 

birth among the lists of victims who perished before 
1555, except that the privileged classes escaped the 
persecution the weight of which fell on their poorer 
brethren. 

The first minister of the Church of Paris, which 
was founded by a noble, was the son of a rich and 
dignified magistrate of Dijon ; honourable women 
were among its earliest martyrs. The first converts 
in Dauphiny were of gentle birth. The Edict of 
Fontainebleau (1540) speaks of the favour and sup- 
port received by the heretics from men of rank. In 
Brittany the nobles welcomed the new teaching 
which was rejected by the ignorant and supersti- 
tious peasantry. 

The rapid diffusion of their doctrines among the 
upper classes and the consciousness of the sympathy 
and support of men of great position probably gave 
the Huguenots a boldness remarkable in a small 
and persecuted minority : but it would be altogether 
erroneous to imagine that they were an oligarchical 
faction. The strength of the Protestants always lay 
among the trading and professional classes and the 
country gentry. From these classes came the men 
who were the first to embrace a simpler faith and 
who clung to it after great nobles, courtiers and 
statesmen had fallen away. At the Revocation of 
the Edict of Nantes not many Schombergs and 
Ruvignys passed the frontiers, but thousands of 
skilful artisans, frugal tradesmen and honourable 
merchants. 

The most significant, and to the orthodox the 
most alarming, symptom of the diffusion of the new 



15691 The Reformation in France, 15 

opinions and of the sympathy with which they were 
regarded, was that the Parhament of Paris, long the 
uncompromising opponent of dissent, hesitated to 
enforce the laws against heresy. 

Henry II. determined himself to be present at a 
general meeting of the members of the various 
courts of law, at which it was proposed to decide 
how the laws against heresy should be applied. 
It was thought that the King's presence would over- 
awe those who were in favour of toleration. But 
the most respectable magistrates disdained to con- 
ceal their opinions. Anne du Bourg thanked God 
that his Majesty was present at the decision of a 
matter which concerned the cause of our Saviour. 
'' It was," he said, "no light thing to condemn those 
who from the midst of the flames call upon His 
name. What ! Crimes most worthy of death, blas- 
phemy, adultery, horrible sins and perjuries are com- 
mitted day by day with impunity in the face of 
heaven, while day by day new tortures are devised 
for men whose only crime is that by the light of the 
Scriptures they have discovered the corruptions of 
the Church of Rome ! " " Let us clearly under- 
stand," said another judge, '^ who they are that 
trouble the Church, lest it should be said, as Elijah 
cried to King Ahab, 'Thou art he that troublest 
Israel.* " The indignation of the King exceeded all 
measure. He ordered Du Bourg and seven others 
to be at once committed to the Bastille ; he swore 
he would see Du Bourg burn with his own eyes. 

But before his vengeance could take effect Henry 
II. tilting with the Captain of his Guards was killed 



1 6 Henry of Navarre, \sb\l- 

by the splinter of a lance. Some bold believer who 
had access to the room where the King's body lay, 
threw over the corpse a piece of tapestry : Saul fall- 
ing from his horse on the road to Damascus, as the 
terrible words sounded in his ears, " Saul, Saul, why 
persecutest thou me ? " 

Although the Protestants saw the judgment of 
God in the King's death, the more farsighted among 
them must have doubted whether that event was 
likely to improve their position. Two policies had 
divided the councils of Henry II. The Constable 
Montmorency had been in favour of alliance with 
Spain, an alliance the necessary consequence of 
which was the violent suppression of heresy. Mont- 
morency's rivals, the Guises, although not less hos- 
tile to the Reformers, were opposed to the Spanish 
connection. They wished to support the claims of 
their niece Mary Stuart to the English throne, and 
dreamt of uniting France, Scotland and England 
into a monarchy capable of balancing the Austro- 
Spanish power. Thus it came that Philip II. was 
compelled to protect the heretic Elizabeth, while 
the Guises were placed in the difficult position of 
being at once the enemies of Spain and of Protes- 
tantism. 

The Guises, ignoring the elder branch of their 
family, which sought to maintain itself peaceably and 
unambitiously in Lorraine, and to provoke as little 
as might be the interference of more powerful neigh- 
bours, claimed to be the representatives of the 
ambitious and unfortunate House of Anjou, from 
which they were descended in the female line. Duke 



1569] The Reformation in France, 17 

Francis signed his marriage contract '' Francis of 
Anjou " ; he obtained from Henry II. when Dau- 
phin a promise of the investiture, or as he preferred 
to call it the " restitution " of Provence ; he sacri- 
ficed, when commanding an army in Italy, the 
interests of France to some chimerical plan for 
asserting the old Angevin claim to the Crown of 
Naples. This baseless assumption was the prelude 
to bolder flights of ambitious fancy. The time was 
not far distant when the agents and pamphleteers 
of the House of Lorraine strove to establish that 
the Crown of France might more justly be worn by 
the descendants of Charles the Great than by any 
member of the usurping House of Capet. 

The Duke of Guise had the reputation of a great 
and popular captain. He had been successful in 
war, his bravery was undoubted, and he affected 
magnanimity in success and a soldierly directness 
of bearing and conduct. The pliant disposition of 
his brother the Cardinal, his experience in every 
form of intrigue, maintained the influence of the 
family at Court, and enabled the Duke to stand 
aloof from a contest of meanness and duplicity, alien 
not so much to his real character as to an ostentatious 
display of chivalrous pride and independence. 

The Cardinal of Lorraine was of graceful and 
commanding presence, gifted with refined and per- 
suasive eloquence, an accomplished scholar and 
singularly successful in winning the confidence of 
those with whom he conversed ; but he was as mean- 
spirited and despondent in adversity as he was 
arrogant and presumptuous in success, and the 



1 8 Henry of Navarre, \\b\l- 

lustre of many splendid qualities was dimmed by a 
sordid avarice unusual in a man of such lofty ambi- 
tion ; and not to be excused in one who enjoyed 
the revenues of three archbishoprics, nine bishoprics 
and numerous other benefices. 

The accession of Francis 11. threw the whole gov- 
ernment of the State into the hands of the Guises. 
The new King was a sickly boy, weak in body and 
mind, the slave of his wife Mary Stuart, who was 
herself ruled by her uncles. 

The Cardinal of Lorraine was so elated to find 
himself in the undisputed control of the royal power 
that he disdained to conciliate his rivals and enemies. 
The Princes of the Blood were treated with con- 
tempt, the Queen-Mother was neglected, no attempt 
was made to disarm the hostility of the nobles, who 
hated the Guises as foreign favourites and upstarts. 
The Protestants were persecuted with increased 
severity. All who attended their meetings, all who 
knew of such meetings and did not at once denounce 
them, were to be punished by death. Du Bourgwas 
burnt, notwithstanding the urgent intercessions of 
the Elector Palatine and the Swiss. 

The authority of the Guises depended on the frail 
life of the King ; their power was not firmly enough 
established to render hopeless the thoughts of resist- 
ance which it provoked. These Lotheringians, it was 
muttered, had usurped the Government ; if the King 
was himself incapable of ruling he ought to be 
assisted by the natural advisers of the Crown, the 
Princes of the Blood, the great officers of state, the 
representatives of the Three Estates of the Realm. 



1569] The Reformation in France. 19 

Calvin persistently inculcated the passive endur- 
ance of persecution, and the majority of the ministers 
of the French Church were his obedient disciples, 
but it became more and more difficult for them to 
restrain their flocks. The early Christians had suf- 
fered themselves to be led unresistingly to martyr- 
dom, and had not cared to attempt to reform — 
except by their prayers and example — a state and a 
society of which they scarcely felt themselves to be 
members, and the end of which they believed to 
be at hand. There was little of this patient spirit 
about the Huguenots — as the French Protestants 
began to be called."^ Those of them who belonged 
to the middle classes had not yet forgotten the 
struggles of their ancestors for municipal indepen- 
dence ; the country people had, it is true, been accus- 
tomed to oppression, but there were few proselytes 
among the peasantry, except where, as in Languedoc 
and the country of the Vaudois, the ground was 
prepared by older traditions of resistance ; least of 
all were the Protestant noblemen and gentlemen, 
whose numbers were rapidly increasing, disposed 
quietly to submit to persecution. By what argu- 
ments could Calvin restrain them ? He might 
appeal to a few isolated texts in the New Testament, 
but the Huguenots, like the Puritans, considered 
themselves a chosen people, and could find warrant 
enough in Holy Writ for smiting the enemies of the 
Lord. If any scruple was still felt in resisting a 

* The derivation of this name is very obscure. According to the 
most probable guess it is a corruption of the German, " Eidgenossen,^" 
confederates. 



20 Herny of Navarre. [1512- 

lawfully constituted authority, this, it was urged, did 
not apply to the tyranny of the Guises. Moreover, 
the Protestants were dragged before extraordinary 
tribunals unknown to the laws, or hunted down by 
riotous mobs. It was afterwards their boast, that 
they had patiently submitted so long as they had 
been butchered under the forms of law and by 
sentence of the established courts. 

In the spring of 1560, partly among the Hugue- 
nots, partly among those who for public or private 
reasons hated the Guises, a plot was formed to seize 
the King and to place the Prince of Conde at the 
head of the Government. The conspirators failed, 
and were cruelly punished. But at an assembly of 
notables, which the Cardinal had summoned in his 
first alarm, those who were opposed to the policy 
of the Government on religious and political grounds 
made themselves heard. Marillac, Archbishop of 
Vienne, an old diplomatist, insisted that the repre- 
sentatives of the nation ought to take their part in 
the government of the country ; the Admiral of 
France, Coligny, presented a petition from the 
Reformers of Normandy, of which province he was 
governor, repudiating all sympathy with the late 
conspiracy but demanding toleration. 

The Guises believed that the influence of the 
Government could secure a subservient majority and 
determined to summon the Estates. The Protes- 
tants were to be excluded by requiring all members 
to subscribe an orthodox confession of faith. All 
who refused to do so would not only not be allowed 
to take their seats, but would be at once thrown into 



1569] The Reformation in France. 21 

prison and punished as heretics without further 
form of trial. 

By these means the Guises trusted to obtain from 
the States-General such a confirmation of their 
authority as might effectually silence all objections 
to its legitimacy. They were the more confident 
because the men who would have been the natural 
leaders of all opposition both religious and political, 
Antony of Bourbon, King of Navarre, and his brother 
Lewis, Prince of Conde, had foolishly ventured to 
Court and placed themselves in their power, and 
might be punished as accomplices in the conspiracy 
against the liberty of the King. 

The death of Francis II. (December 5, 1560) 
frustrated all these plans. The accession of Charles 
IX., a child barely eleven years old, necessitated the 
appointment of a Regent. That Regent could only 
be the Queen-Mother or the first Prince of the 
Blood, the King of Navarre. But the latter had 
promised Catherine de' Medici as the price of her 
protection against the Guises, that he would not, in 
the event of the King's death, press his claim to the 
Regency, and he now kept his word. But the coun- 
cil decided that all questions should in the first 
instance be referred to him, and if his authority 
carried little weight, this was due rather to his 
weakness and want of political skill, than to the fact 
that he did not hold the title of Regent. 

The States-General met on December 15, 1560, 
but under auspices very different from what had 
been anticipated. The enemies of the Guises, the 
Bourbons, Montmorency and Chatillons, were now 



2 2 Heniy of Navarre. \\b\2- 

in the ascendant in the royal council. Notwith- 
standing government influence many Protestants 
had been elected and were allowed to take their 
seats ; a larger number of members belonged to the 
moderate party ; and as yet all who were not fanati- 
cally orthodox were disposed to sympathise with 
the Huguenots, who so far had suffered without 
attempting to retaHate on their enemies. 

The proceedings of the States-General of 1561 
would, had we space, be deserving of our most care- 
ful attention, because they show that there was at 
that time in France a large party in favour of a 
pohcy of rehgious, constitutional and administrative 
reform, which could it have been adopted might 
have changed the whole future of the country and 
have saved it from many years, perhaps from centuries, 
of war, suffering, despotism and revolution : because 
then for the first time we find the great principle of 
toleration authoritatively laid down. '' It is unrea- 
sonable to compel men to do what in their hearts 
they consider wrong. ... for whatever we do 
against our conscience is sin." 

The Estates would have sold the property of the 
Church for the benefit of the King and nation, re- 
formed Religion in accordance with the word of God. 
as interpreted by a national council in which both 
the clergy and representative laymen should have 
sat, limited the royal prerogative by periodical meet- 
ings of the representatives of the nation, diminished 
the privileges of the nobles, and substituted an elec- 
tive magistracy for one which, owing to the sale of 
offices, was rapidly becoming hereditary. 



1569] The Refor^nation in France. 23 

The demands of the States-General of 1561 are 
the best evidence of the pohtical tendencies of the 
majority of the Huguenots and of those moderate 
men who although opposed or indifferent to changes 
in doctrine were hostile to the Pope, the King of 
Spain and the Guises. We may contemplate in 
them an ideal, compared with which all that Henry 
IV. was able to effect shrinks into insignificance. 
But what he attempted was possible, the scheme of 
the Reformers of 1561 was too complete and con- 
sistent to be within the range of practical politics. 
Changes so great could only have been effected by 
an overwhelming tide of public opinion, or by an 
energetic minority controlling the machinery of 
government. The States-General were not supported 
by public opinion and many of the measures they 
proposed excited the violent opposition of all 
constituted authorities. The Third Estate for the 
most part represented municipal oligarchies, neither 
numerous nor popular. The nobility were not organ- 
ised for united action ; among their natural leaders, 
the great nobles and princes, there were few who 
were not mainly actuated by selfish motives, and 
those few were wanting in political insight. Coligny, 
pre-eminent in character, ability and position, failed 
to see that a reformed Church was possible only in 
a reformed State. 

Not only did the proposals of the Estates meet 
with no acceptance, but the disHke with which they 
were regarded was extended to the religious opinions 
with which they were believed to be connected. 

We may henceforth notice a marked change in the 



24 Henry of Navarre. [1512- 

attitude of the Parliaments, of the higher clergy and 
of a powerful party at Court, whose enmity to the 
Huguenots became implacable. The lawyers were 
indignant at the attempt, if not suggested, at any 
rate countenanced by the Protestants, to interfere 
with the number, the emoluments and the tenure of 
judicial offices, which they had begun to consider 
the hereditary possessions of their families. They 
were especially jealous of the interference of the 
States-General, for they had never regarded the 
principle of representative government with favour, 
and had themselves usurped many of the functions 
which a popular assembly, meeting at regular inter- 
vals, would have resumed. Henceforward all but a 
small minority of the judges were eager to strain 
the laws against the dissenters and reluctant to apply 
them in their favour. 

It was, as we shall see, only after years of civil 
war, after full experience of the unpatriotic fanati- 
cism, the anarchy, the selfish and unconstitutional 
ambition of the League and its leaders, after the 
weight of their traditional respect for monarchical 
principles had been thrown into the scale, that a 
considerable number of the more eminent lawyers 
joined the moderate or '^ political " party; and, even 
then, a majority in the courts opposed the formal 
recognition of the principle of toleration. 

Hitherto, also, many of the higher clergy, though 
they had not embraced Calvinism, had been well 
disposed to some measures of reform, which, freeing 
them from the interference of the Roman Curia and 
the avarice of Italian churchmen, might leave them 



1569] The Reformation in France. 25 

in the enjoyment of their revenues and dignity ; but 
henceforth, since the Reformers proposed the secu- 
larisation of the estates of the Church, they could 
only be regarded as pestilent heretics. 

A proposal to resume the lavish grants of money, 
crown lands and pensions made to his favourites by 
Henry 11. alarmed and irritated many powerful men, 
such as the Constable Montmorency and Marshal 
St. Andre ; while the fact that the Huguenots should 
have been able to exercise so great an influence 
over the election of the members of the Estates, was 
a confirmation of the alarming reports of the wide 
diffusion of the new doctrines. Fear stimulated the 
hatred of their enemies. 

A quarter of the inhabitants of France were, it 
was said, included in the 2,500 reformed congrega- 
tions. This is certainly an exaggeration, but it is 
probable that the number of the Protestants was 
never greater than during the first years of the reign 
of Charles IX. What that number was we can only 
guess. The 2,500 congregations may have existed ; 
but while some of these counted many hundred or 
even thousand members, others were composed of 
only the family and retainers of the owner of the 
manor-house in which they met. On the other hand 
among the townspeople and smaller gentry there 
must have been numerous believers who had no op- 
portunity of public worship, or but seldom met to 
partake of the rare ministrations of an itinerant 
preacher. The most probable estimate is that at 
the beginning of the wars of religion, the Hugue- 
nots with women and children amounted to some 



26 Henry of Navarre. [1512- 

1,500,000 souls out of a population of between 
fifteen and twenty millions. But in this minority 
were included about one-fourth of the lesser nobility, 
the country gentlemen, and a smaller proportion of 
the great nobles, the majority of the better sort of 
townspeople in many of the most important towns, 
such as Caen, Dieppe, Havre, Nantes, La Rochelle, 
Nimes, Montpellier, Montauban, Chalons, Macon, 
Lyons, Valence, Limoges and Grenoble, and an im- 
portant minority in other places, such as Rouen, 
Orleans, Bordeaux and Toulouse. The Protestants 
were most numerous in the South-west, in Poitou, 
in the Marche, Limousin, Angoumois and Perigord, 
because in those districts, which were the seats of 
long-established and flourishing manufactures, the 
middle classes were most prosperous, intelligent and 
educated. 

It is doubtful whether the Catholics were not in a 
large majority, even where the superior position, 
intelligence and vigour of the Huguenots gave them 
the upper hand. Only in some parts of the South-west 
and of Dauphiny do the bulk of the population appear 
to have been decidedly hostile to the old religion.^ 

During the course of the Civil War the Protes- 
tants came to be more and more concentrated in 
certain parts of the country, as for instance between 
the Garonne and the Loire. A scheme for the con- 
version of this district into a Protestant republic was 
discussed by the English Council as late as 1625. 
Where they were not strong enough to hold their 
own in arms the Huguenots were either compelled to 
migrate or were butchered and extirpated. 



1569] The Reformation in France. 27 

On the first outbreak of hostilities, the Catholics 
of Toulouse supported by the Parliament massacred 
or drove into exile 3,000 heretics, — among them a 
majority of the scholars of the University and 
nearly all the leading members of the municipality. 
In Provence, although supported by the Governor, 
the Count of Tenda, the Protestants could not main- 
tain themselves. The Parliament of Aix began the 
work of extirpation by sentencing 1,300 heretics to 
the flames. These are two instances out of many. 
Thus it was that Protestantism tended to become 
more and more local in character. Yet from the 
first it made little way in the North-east, in Picardy 
and in Champagne, and in the very heart of the 
country, the Isle de France. It must therefore be 
allowed that the Reformation took root most readily 
in those provinces where the traditions of local inde- 
pendence were strongest, or the immediate authority 
of the Crown most recent, in Gascony, Guienne, 
Languedoc and Dauphiny. 

The Huguenot preachers at first met with con- 
siderable success in Paris. Their congregations 
amounted at times to 50,000 people, but they could 
not make way against the fanaticism of the mob, 
the unscrupulous hatred of the clergy, the opposi- 
tion of the municipality, who dreaded disturbance, 
and the enmity of Parliament and University. 
The Protestants, La Noue tells us, were as little 
a match for their opponents in the capital as a gnat 
is for an elephant: the novices of the convents 
and the priests' housekeepers could have driven 
them out with their broomsticks. Paris indeed was 



28 Henry of Navarre, w^vi- 

scarcely less than Rome the centre of CathoHcism. 
Her University was the chosen abode of sacred 
learning, the supreme teacher and judge of ortho- 
dox doctrine. All strangers admired the piety of 
the Parisians and the many churches which vied 
with each other in the splendour of their services 
and filled the air with the peals which rang from the 
forest of their spires and towers. The streets were 
crowded with monks and nuns ; a procession was 
met at every turn, and the passerby who did not do 
reverence to the Host by kneeling in the filth of the 
ill-paved lanes was likely to rue his excess of nice- 
ness or want of fervour. The tenants and clients of 
the monks filled the populous suburbs, which for the 
most part were the property of the great religious 
houses, St. Germain des Pres, the Charterhouse qn 
the site of the Luxembourg, St. Victor, the Car- 
melites in the Faubourg St. Jacques. The Univer- 
sity with its sixty-five colleges was almost a town in 
itself. Inside the walls the convents and monas- 
teries were not less numerous, many of them rising 
like fortresses from the lofty enclosures of their 
gardens. 

Not only were the Huguenots but a small minority 
of the nation, but that minority itself was composed 
of two very different classes of men. There were 
those whom we may call the French Puritans, men 
of austere life and firm convictions, who wished to 
establish throughout France the same rigid disci- 
pline which Calvin had introduced at Geneva, and 
which John Knox was labouring to uphold in Scot- 
land. There were also those who had embraced the 



15691 The Reformation in France, 29 

doctrines of the Reformation, not so much from 
spiritual conviction as from discontent with the 
abuses of Rome, from love of change, from the 
influence of the new learning, which had shaken the 
foundation of old beliefs, or for purely political and 
social reasons. 

The bold attitude of the Reformers in the Estates, 
the apparent influence at Court of the King of 
Navarre, who boasted that before the year was out 
the Gospel should be preached throughout the King- 
dom, the conversion of many even of the higher 
clergy, the Cardinal of ChatilloUj the Archbishop of 
Aix, the Bishops of Uzes, Oleron, Lescars, Chartres 
and Troyes, were held to be heretics — these were 
among the signs which convinced many that the 
Reformation was on the point of triumphing in 
France. Time-servers like Monluc, Bishop of Va- 
lence, began to preach the Gospel and to denounce 
the errors of Rome to crowded congregations of 
courtiers and nobles, many of whom were glad to 
show their sympathy with a less superstitious creed 
by eating meat in Lent, avoiding the confessional 
and looking forward to a share in the spoils of the 
Church. 

The Queen-Mother appeared not displeased to 
see her ladies reading the New Testament, singing 
the psalms of Marot, and practising the "language 
of Canaan," as they called the biblican cant of the 
zealous Reformers. Margaret of Valois boasts in 
her memoirs that her infant orthodoxy stood un- 
shaken in the midst of this rising tide of heresy, in 
spite of persecution sufl^ered at the hands of her 



30 Henry of Navarre, [1512- 

brother, Henry of Anjou, because she would not 
change her missal for a Calvinist hymn-book. 

Indifferent to the principles involved, Catherine 
de' Medici was watching events, leaving them to 
determine what her future poHcy should be. 

Thus much at any rate was clear, that it was to her 
interest that neither party should become so strong 
as to be indifferent to her support. Besides she was 
as much attracted by the intrigues, the constant 
negotiations, the trickery which a trimming policy 
entailed, as she was repelled by the dangers of a 
more decided course. Machiavelli's heroes, the Cas- 
tracanis, the Sforzas, the Borgias of Italian history, 
may be cited to prove that courage and a tortuous 
policy are not incompatible : their treachery often 
wears the air of splendid audacity. Not so the 
statecraft of the Florentine who so long and so 
fatally influenced the destinies of France. 

The character of Catherine, which has sometimes 
been called an enigma, would rather appear to have 
been singularly simple. A really great statesman 
must understand the varied passions and motives 
of men ; he will understand them best if he has him- 
self experienced them, if he is indeed " so various as 
to be, not one, but all mankind's epitome," but he 
may also understand them, less intimately indeed yet 
sufficiently, by the force of a powerful and sympa- 
thetic imagination. Catherine had neither passion 
nor enthusiasm nor virtue. Revenge and hatred, if 
not malice and rancour, were as strange to her nature 
as gratitude and love ; nor had she sufficient imagi- 
nation to realise how others might be influenced by 



1569] The Wars of Religion. 3 1 

emotions of which she herself had no experience. 
Hence the defects of her poHcy, due less to her ina- 
bility to see that the tricks and devices, which might 
have been successful in some petty Italian State, were 
ill adapted to the wider stage and different con- 
ditions of France, than to the assumption that 
others were swayed by the same simple motives of 
self-interest as herself. Thus her schemes generally 
ended in failure, though she was a clever, unscrupu- 
lous woman with insight and adroitness, full of 
energy and restless activity ; as indefatigable in the 
pursuit of her ambitious intrigues as she had been, 
when younger, in hunting the deer amid the forests 
of Vincennes and Touraine. 

Since it seemed to the Queen-Mother's interest to 
endeavour to keep the peace between the Reformers 
and their enemies, lest she should be at the mercy of 
the conquerors, she allowed herself to be guided by 
the Chancellor L'Hopital, a sincere advocate of 
toleration, and a true patriot, a man, says a contem- 
porary, "who wore the lilies in his heart." 

L'Hopital had shown by his opening address to 
the States-General, in which he expatiated on the old 
maxim — one faith, one law, one king — that he, a 
representative of those moderate men, afterwards 
called " politicians," still clung to the Gallican prin- 
ciple of the intimate connection between Church and 
State, of the dependence of the unity of the one on 
the unity of the other. A Frenchman and an Eng- 
lishman, he said, might, holding the same faith, live 
in peace together ; not so two citizens of the same 
town who differ in religion. He dreamt of some 



32 Henry of Navarre. [1512- 

compromise acceptable both to the Huguenots 
and to the orthodox. But of such a compromise 
the necessary conditions were, first, mutual tolera- 
tion, and secondly, a calm discussion of the points at 
issue. The Chancellor persuaded the Queen-Mother 
to assent to an edict, known as the Edict of January, 
by which all breaches of the public peace were strictly 
forbidden ; and toleration promised to the Protestant 
congregations, provided that they built no new 
places of worship, restored the churches they had 
occupied and held no synods without the sanction of 
the royal council. 

But a conference of the most moderate Protestant 
and Romanist theologians at Poissy disclosed the 
impossibility of a compromise when the points at 
issue were fundamental; and the Regent, in return 
for a large subsidy, promised the clergy to maintain 
the rights, privileges and orthodoxy of the Catholic 
Church. 

The " Edict of January," although very note- 
worthy as the first legal recognition obtained by the 
Reformed Church, was merely an attempt to compel 
the members of the two religions to live peaceably 
together under the protection of the law. 

It was intended by L'Hopital to be a temporary 
expedient, lasting only till some compromise could 
be effected. It did not go far enough to satisfy the 
majority of the Huguenots, whose hopes had been 
raised to an extravagant pitch, while it excited the 
violent opposition of the Catholics and may be said 
to have given the signal of civil war. Every- 
where the Huguenots were exposed to violence and 



t569] The Wars of Religion. 33 

insult, and vainly importuned the law courts for 
protection and redress. In Paris attempts were made 
by the mob to disturb the worship of the Protestants 
in the suburbs. Riot and bloodshed followed. The 
King's council ordered the townspeople to be dis- 
armed. It was clear, the citizens muttered, that the 
Court intended to deliver up the orthodox people of 
Paris to the tender mercies of the Prince of Cond^ 
and his armed nobles. Conde was now the acknowl- 
edged leader of the Huguenots. His credulous and 
vacillating brother, Antony of Navarre, had preferred 
the vague and deceitful promises of Spain to his 
religion and his party. The baits by which he was 
caught give the measure of his capacity. The king- 
dom of Sardinia and conquests on the African coast, 
or the hand of Mary Stuart and the help of Spain 
to make good her pretensions to the English Crown i 
true he was married and owed his title and the greater 
part of his dominions to his wife, but the Pope might 
annul his marriage with a heretic. 

The first service which Antony of Bourbon did his 
new allies was to demand that the Admiral Coligny 
should be dismissed from Court. Coligny, who seems 
to have dreaded the outbreak of hostilities more than 
any other man, and to have foreseen more clearly 
the evils of civil war and the dangers of his party, 
voluntarily left Paris. Catherine endeavoured to 
obtain the simultaneous retirement of the CathoHc 
leaders. But the Marshal St. Andre, a man enriched 
and powerful by the favour of Henry II., refused to 
go to Lyons, the seat of his government, and spoke 
of the Queen-Mother in no measured terms. He 



34 Henry of Navarre. [1512- 

said, she would but meet with her deserts if she were 
tied in a sack and tossed into the river. The Guises 
and their allies agreed to meet in Paris (March, 1562) 
and to try conclusions with Conde. It was clear that 
hostilities could not long be averted. 

It was important to deprive the Huguenots of the 
sympathy and help of the German Lutherans. No 
prince had greater influence among the German 
Protestants, by his character and family connections, 
than Duke Christopher of Wurtemberg. The Duke 
of Guise and his brother the Cardinal visited him. 
They were prodigal of flattery and caresses. They 
listened to the arguments of his theologians and 
pronounced them reasonable, nay convincing. The 
Duke said he was a rough soldier and did not profess 
to understand such things, but it seemed to him that 
he was a Lutheran. The Cardinal declared that he 
would as soon pray in a black gown as a red. Both 
thanked God that they never had and swore that 
they never would put any man to death for his 
religion's sake. The first act of the Duke on his 
return was, as he passed through St. Nicholas in 
Lorraine, to order the execution of an artisan Avhose 
child had been baptised according to the Lutheran 
rite ! On reaching Vassy, a small manufacturing 
town, whose inhabitants had embraced Calvinism, 
he allowed his guards to fire upon a barn in which 
they were assembled for their Sunday worship. The 
Protestants tried to barricade the door and a horrid 
struggle ensued, if indeed that can be called a strug- 
gle in which one side consisted of unarmed towns- 
folk encumbered by women and children, the other 



1569] The Wars of Religion, 35 

of veteran soldiers armed to the teeth. Sixty men, 
women and children were killed and far more 
wounded. But the importance of the '' Massacre of 
Vassy," from which we may date the commencement 
of the wars of religion which were to desolate France 
for more than a generation, was out of all proportion 
to the number of victims ; far more atrocious scenes 
of bloodshed had taken place in the South, yet had 
excited little attention. It was the presence of 
Guise at this bold violation of the Edict of January, 
at this defiance of the Huguenots and of the law, 
which made it so important. The most notable man 
in the Catholic party had thrown down the gauntlet, 
would the Protestants dare to pick it up ? 

The Catholic preachers glorified the slaughter of the 
heretics. They justified it by the example of Moses 
who had caused the worshippers of the golden calf 
to be slain, and of Jehu whose godly zeal had 
put to the sword two kings and twelve hundred 
princes, and cast out Queen Jezebel to be eaten by 
the dogs. The irritation of the Protestants was 
proportionate to the exultation of their enemies. 
They sent Beza, the most eminent as well as the 
most courtly of their divines, to wait upon the Queen 
and to demand the punishment of the assassins who 
violated the royal edict. These requests were ar- 
dently supported by Conde, who offered to raise 
50,000 men to maintain the King's authority. The 
King of Navarre on the other hand angrily reproached 
Beza with stirring up civil strife : " Sire," replied the 
divine, '' it is true that it is for the Church of God 
to receive rather than to give blows, but remember, 



36 Henry of Navarre. Wb\l- 

it is an anvil on which many hammers have been 
broken." 

On March 10, Guise, accompanied by other 
nobles and escorted by 2,000 men-at-arms, entered 
Paris. The people hailed him as their deliverer and 
received him with royal honours. Conde was com- 
pelled to leave the city and fell back on Meaux in- 
stead of hurrying with the forces at his command to 
Fontainebleau, whither the Queen-Mother and her 
children had retired, and thus securing for his party 
the prestige of the King's name and presence. 

Catherine had repeatedly written urging him to 
protect her, the King and the nation against the 
men who would overthrow all peace and order. But 
before the Prince made up his mind to act, the op- 
portunity was gone. The confederates had reached 
Fontainebleau, and although the Queen-Mother 
resisted for a few days, and even attempted flight, 
she was in the end compelled or persuaded to return 
to Paris. 

Conde had perhaps been delayed by the hesitation 
of Coligny. The Admiral shrank from civil war, he 
recognised also more clearly than his friends the 
weakness of his party. His brothers and his wife 
urged him to join the Prince ; for two days he 
refused to listen to their arguments. The story has 
often been told how during the night he was aroused 
by the sobs of his wife : " Husband, I fear lest to 
be so wise in the wisdom of this world prove folly in 
God's sight ; you will be the murderer of those 
whose murder you do not prevent." " Lay your 
hand on your heart," he replied, '' ask yourself 



1569] The Wars of Religion, 37 

whether you are ready to bear failure and defeat, 
the reproaches of enemies and friends, the condemna- 
tion of the many who judge causes by the event, 
treason, exile, dishonour, nakedness, hunger, and, 
harder to endure, the hunger of your children, death 
on the scaffold after seeing your husband suffer. 
Ponder these thing for three weeks, and then, if you 
so decide,- 1 will go and perish with you, and with 
our friends." '' The three weeks are already passed," 
she exclaimed, 'Met not the blood of the victims of 
three weeks be upon your head, or I shall be a witness 
against you before the judgment-seat of God." 
Next morning the Admiral took horse with his house- 
hold and his brothers to join the Prince of Cond6 
at Meaux, and the civil war had begun which was to 
desolate France for forty years. 

Was the hesitation of Coligny justified ? Had the 
Protestants any alternative to an appeal to the 
sword? Some writers both at the time and since 
have maintained that if the Huguenots had continued 
to submit to persecution with the same patience as 
in the past, their doctrine would have continued to 
spread ; that the sight of their sufferings and of 
their virtues would have converted the less fanatical 
of their opponents and have softened the hearts of 
even the most cruel. Undoubtedly the number of 
Protestants in France diminished after the first civil 
war ; therefore it is argued the war was the cause of 
that diminution. But the Great Hound, as the 
Catholics called the fanatical mob, had been slipped ; 
before the outbreak of hostilities, the Protestants of 
the middle classes were being massacred or robbed 



38 Henry of Navarre. [1512- 

and driven into exile by their orthodox neighbours. 
There were more victims in 1562 than ten years 
later in the year of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. 
Soon the nobility would have fared no better. Even 
the leaders themselves, had they not taken up arms, 
would have been sacrificed to the jealous ambition 
cloaked by religious zeal of the Guises and their 
allies. No patient endurance on the part of the 
Huguenots would have disarmed their persecutors ; 
and the time was past when such patient endurance 
could be expected from them. Here and there they 
were and felt themselves to be the stronger party. 
The images and relics of the Papists were an abom- 
ination to them ; on these at any rate they could 
avenge the sufferings of their brethren. But, although 
with few exceptions they abstained at first from 
injury to the property or persons of Catholics, the 
orthodox population resented far more bitterly the 
disfigurement of a statue of the Virgin, the destruc- 
tion of the toe bone of St. Crispin, or the thumb nail 
of St. Athanasius, than an insult to a nun or the 
assassination of a friar. 

Yet, although we hold that the Protestants had 
no alternative but to fight for their existence, when 
once they had drawn the sword, all chance of France 
becoming a Protestant country, if such chance ever 
existed, was at an end. They were too small a 
minority to impose their faith on a majority whose 
fanaticism and zeal were inflamed by the struggle. 

At the outset the numerical superiority of the 
Catholics was to some extent counterbalanced by 
the organisation of the Protestant churches, which 



1569] The Wars of Religion. 39 

enabled the Huguenots to act with singular una- 
nimity and concert. They had seized many of the 
most important towns before their adversaries had 
even begun to take the field. It was also counter- 
balanced by the fact that the Huguenot minority 
was almost entirely composed of the most warlike, 
intelligent and industrious classes ; that in short 
it comprised the very flower of the French people. 
The noblest traditions of feudal chivalry, the culture 
of the Renaissance, a piety inspired and sustained 
by the constant study of the Gospels produced men 
in whom the best characteristics of their nation were 
combined with a moral elevation, a purity and 
dignity of character, " an heroic breath of soul ani- 
mated by a simple piety and chastened by a chequered 
experience " rarely if ever equalled. By the side of 
the Colignys, the La Noues and Du Plessis-Mornays, 
the characters of the Eliots, Hampdens and Hutchin- 
sons of our own civil wars appear narrow and incom- 
plete, and not a few of the rank and file of the party 
were worthy of such leaders. But besides their 
numerical superiority the Catholics had three great 
advantages : the possession of the King's person ; 
the control of the capital and the sympathy of its 
inhabitants ; the command of the financial resources 
of the Government and of the clergy. 

The contributions of their churches were a pre- 
carious resource, insufficient to provide for the 
regular payment of the infantry and of the foreign 
mercenaries, whom the Protestants were obliged to 
employ. The cavalry which formed the strength of 
the Huguenot armies was indeed composed almost 



40 Henry of Navarre. [1512- 

entirely of the gentry, who served at their own ex- 
pense. It was their poverty which compelled them, 
armed only with rapier and pistols, to encounter the 
mailclad lancers of the royal armies. Few among 
them could afford the high price of a trained charger, 
able to carry his own and his rider's armour. But 
though, in La Noue's phrase, the Huguenot gentry 
were better armed with courage than corselets, the 
lightness of their equipment had its advantages. It 
enabled them by the rapidity of their movements to 
hold their own against the greater numbers of their 
enemies. In battle, the cumbrous defensive armour 
and ponderous lance of the man-at-arms made him a 
formidable antagonist, but only when he could fight in 
his own way and on suitable ground. A more serious 
disadvantage was the difficulty of enforcing dis- 
cipline among these well-born volunteers, of inducing 
them to serve far away from their homes and the 
impossibility of keeping them together for a long 
campaign. The dangers incurred by their families 
during their absence, the necessity of obtaining 
further resources, could always be alleged as an 
excuse for leaving the army. 

The leadership of Conde was another source of 
weakness to the Protestant cause. Lewis of Bourbon 
was more sincerely attached to the Reformed Reli- 
gion than his brother, yet the licence of his life was 
strangely at variance with Puritan morality. More 
than once Calvin had rebuked him for his '' mad in- 
trigues," which were not less dangerous to the cause 
than to his own salvation. His good nature, his 
bravery and his chivalry were far from compen- 



1569] The Wars of Religion. 41 

sating for his political incapacity and reckless- 
ness. On most occasions the Prince, much to his 
credit, showed due deference to the wisdom and ex- 
perience of Coligny, his uncle by marriage ; yet 
there were times when the Admiral must have felt 
how greatly the necessity of working in harmony 
with such a man, of leading while he appeared to 
follow, increased the difficulties of the situation. 

We have not space to follow the events of the wars 
of religion, except so far as they immediately affected 
the fortunes of Henry of Navarre. Nor is it im- 
portant to remember the terms of treaties and of 
edicts of toleration which were never observed, nor 
perhaps intended to be observed, or the details of 
battles which decided nothing, and to each of which 
we might apply the answer of Marshal Vielleville 
when asked by Charles IX. who had won the day at 
St. Denis (1567). '' Neither your Majesty nor the 
Prince of Conde, but King Philip of Spain, since as 
many gallant gentlemen have fallen on both sides, as 
would have sufficed to drive the Spaniards out of 
Flanders." 

One by one the men fell whose ambition had led 
them to provoke the war in the name of Him who 
had said that whoso draws the sword shall perish by 
the sword ; St. Andre at Dreux, Antony of Bourbon 
in the same year before Rouen (1562) ; in the next 
year Francis of Guise by the hand of an assassin ; 
four years later the Constable Anne of Mont- 
morency at St. Denis. 

In the summer of 1568 the Chatillons and the 
Prince of Conde escaped almost miraculously an 



42 Henry of Navarre. [1512- 

attempt to seize them in time of peace. A sudden 
and unexpected flood of the Loire saved from their 
pursuers the Httle band of women and children who 
escorted by barely 150 men had traversed the breadth 
of hostile France to gain the sheltering walls of La 
Rochelle. 

Early in the next year (1569) the Prince and the 
Admiral were marching towards the upper Loire to 
effect a junction with the Protestants of Languedoc, 
when want of discipline brought on an engagement 
between the vanguard led by Coligny, and the Cath- 
olic army under the command of the Duke of Anjou. 
Conde, hearing that the Admiral was attacked by 
overwhelming numbers, galloped to his assistance at 
the head of his staff and escort. As he was about to 
charge, a kick from the horse of his brother-in-law, 
the Count of La Rochefoucauld, broke his leg. The 
bone protruded through his jack-boot, but he refused 
to leave the saddle, and, as he gathered his little 
troop around him, exclaimed : " Nobles of France, 
this is the moment we have longed for ; remember in 
what state Lewis of Bourbon charges for Christ and 
his country." 

The onslaught of the Prince and his guard broke 
through the Catholic ranks, but overwhelmed by 
numbers he was at length borne from his horse. He 
was unable to rise and had surrendered to a gentle- 
man whom he knew, when the Captain of the Guards 
of the Duke of Anjou came up and shot him from 
behind, by the command of his master, as was gen- 
erally believed. 

The Battle of Jarnac, so this engagement was called, 



1569] The Wars of Religion. 43 



was little more than a skirmish, but the death of 
Conde was an event of importance. 

So far as the presence of princes in their army was 
an answer to those who affected to despise the 
Huguenots, they did not suffer by Conde's death, for 
no sooner had the news reached the Queen of Navarre 
than she hurried to the camp at Cognac with her son 
and his cousin, the heir of the murdered Prince. 

In the presence of the army, the young Prince of 
Beam, Henry of Bourbon, swore '' on his honour, soul 
and life " never to abandon the cause, and was hailed 
as their leader by the acclamations of the soldiery. 

The Queen herself solemnly put on her son's 
armour. The joy of maintaining so just a cause 
raised him, she said, above his age, and her above her 

sex. 

But, although accompanied by the two young 
Princes, whom the Catholics mockingly called his 
pages, Coligny had henceforward the undivided com- 
mand of the Huguenot army as well as the principal 
voice in determining the pohcy of his party. 




CHAPTER II. 

THE PARENTAGE OF HENRY OF BOURBON — HIS 
EDUCATION AND MARRIAGE — ST. BARTHOL- 
OMEW — THE PEACE OF MONSIEUR. 

1555— 1576. 

0T the beginning of the i6th century the 
three branches into which the House 
of Bourbon, descended from Robert 
of Clermont, sixth son of St. Lewis, 
had divided, were represented re- 
spectively by Peter, Duke of Bour- 
bon, husband of Anne of France, the daughter of. 
Lewis XL, Charles, Count of Montpensier and Charles, 
Count of Vendome. The only child of the Duke of 
Bourbon became the wife of her cousin Montpensier, 
who with her hand obtained the duchy, but fell child- 
less, a traitor and an exile, leading the army of 
Charles V. to the sack of Rome. By his death Ven- 
dome became the head of his family and heir to the 
French throne, should the male lineage of the House 
of Valois fail. His son Antony of Bourbon was 
brave and good-natured, showing flashes of gener- 
osity and enthusiasm, but unstable and licentious, 
easily influenced by those around him, as dangerous 

44 



Parentage of Henry of Bourbon. 45 



and as little to be trusted, said Calvin, as if his fits of 
zeal had been the calculated hypocrisy of a traitor. 
Such as he was he obtained the hand of the greatest 
heiress in France, Jane d'Albret, the daughter of 
Henry d'Albret, King of Navarre, and Margaret of 
Angouleme, the sister of Francis I. 

The saying of Napoleon, that Africa begins at the 
Pyrenees, can scarcely fail to occur to the traveUer 
who climbs to the Port de Venasque, or to any other 
of the high passes, which are little more than notches 
cut into a continuous wall of mountains, and turns 
from the green valleys and chestnut-clad slopes of 
France to the stony mountain ridges which rise on 
the Spanish side, one behind the other, till they 
gradually sink into what appears an arid table-land. 
Here at any rate he must believe Nature herself has 
set the limits of two nations; yet during the Middle 
Ages the Pyrenees separated nothing. On the east 
the counts of Barcelona, afterwards Kings of Aragon, 
were the lords of wide domains in Languedoc and 
Provence, which before the i6th century had shrunk 
to the county of Roussillon. On the west the Kings 
of Navarre owing fealty to the French Crown for 
other possessions, ruled from the Ebro to the Adour 
as sovereign Princes over a territory inhabited by a 
population mainly Basque in origin. 

The marriage of Jane of Navarre with Phihp the 
Fair, in 1285, united for a time the kingdom of Na- 
varre to France. In 1 328 her granddaughter, excluded 
by the Salic law from the French throne, inherited 
Navarre, which passed by marriage successively to 
the House of Evreux, Foix and Albret. 



4 6 Henry of Navarre. [1565- 

In 15 12 Ferdinand of Spain conquered all Navarre 
south of the Pyrenees, on the pretext that John 
d'Albret, King of Navarre by right of his Avife 
Catherine de Foix, had refused a passage through his 
dominions to the Spanish troops, and had concluded 
a treaty with Lewis XII. 

The kingdom of Navarre was henceforth reduced 
to a few square leagues of territory on the French side 
of the Pyrenees ; but its ruler was still a sovereign 
monarch, who paid homage neither to France nor 
Spain, while Beam and the other fiefs of the houses 
of Foix and Albret supplied the means for keeping 
up some show of kingly state. It did not therefore 
seem a wholly disproportionate match when in 1527 
Francis L allowed his sister Margaret to marry Henry 
d'Albret, the son of John d'Albret and Catherine of 
Foix. The county of Armagnac, given to her in 
perpetuity as part of her dower, very conven- 
iently rounded off the possessions of the Kings of 
Navarre. 

Margaret, lively and high-spirited, eagerly inter- 
ested both in this world and the next, had before 
been ill matched with the dull and lethargic Duke 
of Alencon, to whose cowardice at Pavia the defeat 
of the French and the capture of their King, her 
hero and her idol, had been ascribed. Her fancy 
probably fixed on Henry of Albret because he 
possessed those brilliant qualities in which her late 
husband had been wanting. He had fought with 
the same valour as Francis, he had shared his cap- 
tivity till he made his escape under romantic circum- 
stances, he was chivalrous — as chivalry was then 



15761 Parentage of Henry of Bourbon. 47 

understood — ready-witted and justly popular among 
his subjects. 

The King of Navarre was twelve years younger 
than his bride, but it was not disparity in years only 
which made the second marriage of Margaret as 
little happy as the first. It was more bitter to be 
the victim of misplaced love than of a match imposed 
by political necessity. Henry of Albret, who had 
neither elevation of character nor fixity of purpose, a 
libertine in an age when what would now be licence 
was accounted sober and godly living, was not likely 
to be faithful to a plain and elderly wife, or even con- 
siderate in the manner of his infidelity. There may 
possibly have been faults on both sides. The Queen 
was an author, a theologian and a poetess ; in short, 
a most superior woman, accustomed to the homage 
and flattery of courtiers, scholars and divines. 
'' Madame, you would know too much," her hus- 
band is said to have exclaimed with an irritation 
perhaps pardonable, had it not been emphasised with 
a box on the Queen's ears. Nor could Margaret's 
blind devotion to her selfish brother, however amia- 
ble a weakness, have been other than an additional 
element of discomfort in her married life. 

Henry of Albret would have been well pleased that 
his only child Jane should have married Philip of Spain; 
and since the match would have given the Spanish 
house a sure title to Navarre and a firm footing on the 
French side of the Pyrenees it might not have been 
displeasing to Charles V. But the mere suggestion 
of such an arrangement was alarming to Francis I., 
and his sister would not entertain the thought of any 



48 Henry of Navarre, tl556- 

opposition to the King's wish ; she would sooner, 
she said, see her daughter dead than do him a 
disservice. 

After the accession of Henry II. (1547) Jane, now 
a handsome brunette of seventeen, was among the 
gayest of his Court, and the King, haunted like his 
father by the fear that Spain might with her hand 
obtain the northern slope of the Pyrenees, was well 
pleased to see her encourage the addresses of Antony 
of Bourbon, a suitor but little approved by her 
parents. Their opposition yielded to the royal 
will, and the marriage took place at Moulins on 
October 20, 1548. 

Henry of Bourbon was the last of three sons born 
to Jane of Albret and her husband. His little 
brothers died in their first infancy. The eldest was 
entrusted to the care of a chilly old lady who so 
carried into practice her maxim that it was better to 
sweat than to shiver, that no breath of air was ever 
allowed to reach the hot and stifling rooms where 
the unfortunate baby was slowly suffocated in his 
swaddling clothes. The next child was dropped by 
his nurse and a gentleman who were amusing him, or 
themselves, by tossing him in and out of a window. 
His hurt might have been cured had it not been con- 
cealed by the terrified culprits. 

The King of Navarre, anxious for an heir, de- 
clared that, since his daughter so little understood 
how to look after her children, the next baby must 
be born in B^arn, and that he himself would see that 
it was properly brought up. Accordingly, although 
it was winter, Jane hurried in a fortnight from 



1576] Education of Henty of Bourbon. 49 

Picardy to Pau where, ten days later, Henry of 
Bourbon came into the world during the night of 
December 13, 1555. 

Jane and her husband had seen with some anxiety 
the influence gained by his mistresses over the King 
of Navarre ; they feared that his will might not 
be satisfactory. The Princess hinted to her father 
that she would Hke to see it. He repHed : " You 
shall have it to keep, if you will give me in exchange 
a lusty grandson, and sing when he first sees the 
light, for I want no whimpering, puling baby ! " 
It has often been told how the bargain was kept. 
How the King brought to his daughter's room his 
will in a golden casket, and received in exchange the 
new-born infant which he wrapped in a fold of his 
dressing-gown, delighted to see it joyously nod its 
head and suck its lips when they were rubbed 
with a clove of garlic and moistened with a drop of 
Gascon wine. It was perhaps this precocious indul- 
gence which gave the infant a distaste for its natural 
food. Nurse after nurse was tried, and it was with 
the eighth that the httle Henry was sent to a castle 
in the mountains of Beam, where the air was keenest 
and most bracing, to be brought up according to the 
directions of his grandfather, under the care of 
Madame de Miossans, a connection of the Bour- 
bons. 

Historians tell us how the King of Navarre insisted 
that the child should run about barefoot, join in 
the rough sports of the village lads, and live on 
the national porridge. Since, however, Henry of 
Albret died when his grandson was only two years 



50 Henry of Navarre. [1555- 

old, we may surmise that this hardening process was 
scarcely begun during his lifetime. 

On the old King's death, his daughter and her hus- 
band hurried to take possession of their inheritance, 
and at once sent for their little son, Avhom they took 
with them to the French Court, where their interests 
required their presence. Henry II. was attracted by 
the bold prattle of the child and made some pro- 
posal that he should be afBanced to his daughter 
Marguerite, his senior by six months. The King 
also offered to have him educated with his own 
children, but this Jane refused, and returning to 
Beam took her son with her. There he remained 
till the death of Francis II. (1560), and there we may 
suppose the education began which helped to make 
Henry of Navarre, in the phrase of a Protestant 
writer, " that iron wedge tempered by God, to cleave 
the hard knot of our calamities." If it was Henry 
of Albret who determined that his grandson 
should be no effeminate weakling, but a true moun- 
taineer, frugal, active and enduring, the Queen of 
Navarre must at least have the credit of having carried 
out her father's intention. Nor was the rod spared. 
*' Whip the Dauphin well," wrote Henry IV., "when- 
ever he is naughty. I know by my own experience 
there is nothing in the world so profitable. I was 
constantly thrashed when of his age." Graver 
studies were not neglected. His first tutor was 
one La Gaucherie, a man of learning who,, like the 
great majority of scholars, had adopted the opinions 
of the Reformers. He was probably chosen by 
Antony of Bourbon, at whose invitation '' the Ven- 



1576] Education of Henry of Bourbon. 5 i 

erable Company of the pastors of Geneva " had sent 
Theodore Beza (de Beze) to Nerac, to instruct the 
royal family in the doctrine of Calvin (July, 1556). 
The convictions of Antony were fleeting and super- 
ficial, the deeper nature of his wife was less easily 
stirred. " In your family," wrote a correspondent of 
her daughter, " by some reversal of the Salic law, 
constancy is the exclusive heritage of the women." 
Jane was slow to embrace the faith in defence of 
which she afterwards hazarded her possessions, her 
children and her life. Beza wrote that the King of 
Navarre showed great devotion. Every one be- 
lieved that he thought of nothing but the means 
whereby Christ's Kingdom might be advanced, while 
the Queen his wife was very cold, fearing to give the 
Spanish or French King a pretext for seizing her 
dominions, and unwilling to sacrifice the pleasures of 
this world. 

It was not till 1560 that Jane abjured the errors of 
Rome. '' Hearing the news of the imprisonment of 
the Prince of Conde and of the plots formed against 
her husband, as well as that the Spaniards were pre- 
paring to seize by surprise her principality of Beam 
and what she still retained of Navarre, the Queen, 
seeing that her trust in man availed nothing, and 
touched to the quick by the love of God, had re- 
course to Him as to her only refuge." No doubt 
she saw the answer to her prayers in the death of 
Francis II. and the release of her brother-in-law and 
husband. 

La Gaucherie, like a more celebrated educator of 
the time, Beroalde, taught the dead languages orally, 



52 Henry of Navarre, [1555- 



a method by which surprising results appear some- 
times to have been obtained. Henry learnt Latin 
sufficiently well for practical purposes ; of Greek he 
seems only to have known a few tags, Avhich his tutor 
made him learn by rote, parrot-fashion. He was 
probably not a very apt or patient pupil. His 
wonderful physical activity, or rather abnormal rest- 
lessness, must have made all sedentary study difficult 
and unprofitable. In later years, when after a long 
day's hunting his weary attendants could scarcely 
stand, he could not rest, but must move about or 
dance ; even when he was past middle life his sub- 
jects wondered how a Prince so constantly in the 
saddle or at the tennis court had time for affairs of 
state. No wonder that a man who was movement 
incarnate could scarce find leisure or patience to read 
a book. 

All Henry's childhood was not spent in the brac- 
ing air of the Pyrenees and in the healthy moral 
atmosphere of the more and more Puritan Court of 
Nerac or Pau. After the death of Francis H. the 
Queen of Navarre, bringing her children with her, 
joined her husband at the French Court. We have 
already seen how Antony of Bourbon allowed him- 
self to be outwitted by the Queen-Mother and 
befooled by the Guises and Spain. Jane, indignant 
at the weak inconstancy of her husband, retired to 
her hereditary dominions. Antony kept his son 
with him, but neither dismissed his Protestant tutor 
La Gaucherie, nor even seriously insisted upon his 
attending Mass. Probably the recent orthodoxy of 
the King of Navarre had no other root than his am- 



1576] Education of Henry of Bourbon. 53 

bition. Such religious convictions as he may have 
possessed remained unchanged. The heretical edu- 
cation of the Prince of Beam was however supple- 
mented by such instruction as a boy of nine could 
obtain at the College of Navarre,* where in a desul- 
tory fashion he attended lectures with two other 
young Princes, his name-sakes, Henry of Valois and 
Henry of Guise. 

After Antony of Bourbon had fallen before Rouen 
and Cond6 had been taken prisoner at Dreux (De- 
cember, 1562), the Queen-Mother, fearing nothing so 
much as the growing power of the Guises, was 
anxious to conciliate the Huguenots. She therefore 
allowed Jane of Navarre to send for her son. But it 
seemed very important to Catherine and her council 
to keep under their control and influence a boy who 
was the head of the House of Bourbon, the heir to 
vast possessions and who would be a hostage for the 
good behaviour of his mother, for she more and more 
identified he-r interests with those of the Huguenot 
party. He was therefore urgently invited to return 
to Court in the name of Charles IX., who had now 
attained his nominal majority. 

The Queen of Navarre did not think it expedient 
to disregard the King's wish. She had been excom- 
municated by the Pope, and a conspiracy had been 
formed to betray her into the power of Philip H., 
who, so it was reported, hoped to merit the special 



* The College of Navarre, one of the oldest colleges attached to the 
University of Paris, founded in 1304 by Jane of Navarre, v^ife of 
Philip the Fair, had at all times been especially distinguished by 
royal favour. 



54 Henry of Navarre, [1555- 

favour and indulgence of heaven by an auto-da-fe\ of 
which a queen should be the victim, while he trusted 
to secure the possession of her dominions by the 
eternal captivity of her children. The French Gov- 
ernment had interfered energetically on her behalf 
at Rome and she might need the same help against 
Spain. She therefore sent her son once more to a 
court where he would be bej/ond her care and ex- 
posed to influences which she could not but dread. 

The Prince of Beam accompanied Charles IX. and 
the Queen-Mother during a long progress through 
the kingdom (March, 1564, to December, 1565). It 
is probable that in this wandering court the book- 
learning of Henry made no great progress, although 
he is said under the supervision of La Gaucherie to 
have completed a translation of the Commentaries 
of Caesar. But he must have learnt much far more 
useful to a future ruler of men than Greek and Latin 
syntax, perhaps also much that had better been un- 
learnt. For the sharp-eyed, quick-witted and ready- 
tongued boy of twelve, who appeared, says an eye- 
witness, several years older than his age, and whona 
Catherine liked to have about her, for the sake of 
his bold and lively sallies, must have seen through 
the thin veil of decorum spread over a court, the 
ladies of which were allowed at their will to be " vo- 
taresses of Dian or of Venus," provided that their 
intrigues were serviceable, or at least no hindrance, 
to the policy of their mistress. 

But though the knowledge of manners acquired 
among the courtiers of the Florentine must have 
been singularly unedifying, a progress through France 



1576] Education of Henry of Bourbon. 55 

which lasted nearly two years, must have taught the 
young Prince better than the care of any tutor to 
know the provinces, the cities and the men by whose 
side and against whom he was destined to fight and 
whom he was afterwards to reunite under his sceptre. 

In the course of this progress the Court visited 
the Queen of Navarre at Nerac, but it was not till 
Jane had returned this visit in the following year and 
had again entertained the King and his mother in 
her Picard county of Marie, that she was allowed to 
take her son back with her to Beam, She seems to 
have been satisfied that by the care of his tutor her 
boy had escaped the contagion of the Court ; for 
(December, 1566) she wrote to Beza that it was to La 
Gaucherie that Henry owed " that root of piety, 
which by God's grace has now been so implanted 
in his heart by godly precepts, that it already puts 
forth both branch and fruit." 

Henry, now thirteen, had during the latter half of 
his short life spent most of his time at Court, and, ex- 
cept so far as his studies were directed by his Calvinist 
t,utor, had shared the education of the Valois Princes ; 
but for the next two years he was trained physically, 
intellectually and morally under the eye of his 
mother. The hardy education of his childhood was 
resumed. He was taught to live a frugal and active 
life, to endure fatigue and privation, to excel not 
only in riding, fencing and tennis, the universal ac- 
complishments of a gentleman, but also to run and 
wrestle and to climb the rocks barefoot in pursuit of 
chamois and bear. La Gaucherie was succeeded in 
the office of tutor by a m.ore eminent scholar, Flo- 



56 Henry of Navarre, [1555- 

rent Chrestien, the pupil of Henry Stephens, the 
friend of De Thou, a man whose friendship was 
sought and valued even by Ronsard and Pibrac, 
whom he had engaged in theological controversy. 
The Prince of Beam's scholarship apparently im- 
proved under Chrestien's tuition and he became in 
Scaliger's opinion no bad judge of Latin style, yet it 
is probable that classical studies were not much in- 
sisted on, since the Queen thought it more important 
that he should know the history of his own and other 
countries and the languages of Italy and Spain. 
Chrestien afterwards accompanied his pupil to the 
camp of the Huguenot army and showed himself as 
capable of using a sword as a pen in the defence of 
his religion, no doubt to the advantage of his influ- 
ence over the Prince. 

Michelet fancifully speculates how far Henry of 
Bourbon's versatility and many-sidedness of character 
may have been due to the rapid succession of wet- 
nurses during his infancy. We might more plausibly 
seek to explain it on the principle of ''heredity," 
and point out that he was the descendant of the 
Foix, the Graillis and the Albrets, half princes, half 
adventurers, who pushed their fortunes by love and 
war, amid the quarrels of more powerful neighbours: 
that he was the grandson of the mystical and 
romantic yet alert and cheerful Margaret of Angou- 
leme and of the popularity-loving, affable and jovial 
but licentious and superficial Henry of Albret ; the 
son of the determined, passionate and religious, 
Queen of Navarre and of the weak and inconstant 
though physically brave Antony of Bourbon. But 



1576] Education of Henry of Bourbon. 5 7 

it is perhaps more profitable to bear in mind how 
various were the influences to which the boyhood 
of Henry was exposed. How useful an education, 
though dangerous to any strength or depth of moral 
and religious conviction, it was, that the Prince who 
was destined to reunite the jarring factions and sects 
of France, should have been from his earhest youth 
equally at home in the Tuileries or the Louvre, 
among the motley crowd of Itahan adventurers, in- 
triguing priests, dissolute gallants, ambitious nobles 
and unscrupulous statesmen, in the little court of 
Nerac and Pau, the asylum and stronghold of French 
Protestantism, in the farms and cottages of the 
Gascon peasantry and in the camps of the Huguenot 
veterans. 

After the battle of Jarnac, Coligny, who had been 
joined by a powerful body of German auxiliaries, 
was compelled by the impatience of his followers to 
besiege Poitiers and afterwards, at Montcontour, to 
engage with inferior forces the army of the Duke of 
Anjou. Their superior numbers and a field of battle 
well suited to the manoeuvres of heavy cavalry gave 
the Papists a victory loudly celebrated throughout 
Catholic Europe. Yet the results of the victory 
were unimportant. 

Charles IX., jealous of his brother's glory, joined 
the army, and sat down before St. Jean d'Angely, 
wasting three months and the lives of 6,000 men. 
The Admiral, accompanied by the young princes of 
■Beam and Cond6, after throwing strong garrisons 
into the Protestant towns of Poitou, led the remains 
of his cavalry into the South, where he was joined 



58 Henry of Navarre. [1555- 

by numerous partisans and soon found himself once 
more at the head of a formidable force. 

It was clear that without the help of Spain the 
Huguenots could not be crushed; but Philip II. was 
fully occupied by a war with the Turks and with the 
revolted Moors. He moreover expected as the price of 
his assistance that the interests and policy of France, 
if not her independence, should be subordinated to 
Spanish ambition. If war and persecution implied 
submission to Spain all Frenchmen, whose love of 
their country was not extinguished by fanaticism, 
were necessarily disposed to peace and toleration. 
Catherine de' Medici, who cared little for the sup- 
pression of heresy, thought that too high a price 
might easily be paid for an object itself of doubtful 
advantage. It was true that her favourite Anjou 
was for the moment the Catholic hero, his fresh 
laurels overshadowed the old glories of the House of 
Guise, yet at some future time CoHgny and his fol- 
lowers, who seemed less formidable since their defeat 
and the death of Conde, might be needed as a 
counterpoise to the faction of Lorraine. 

The unsuccessful siege of St. Jean d'Angely had 
disgusted the King with a war which exhausted his 
resources, interfered with his amusements and min- 
istered only to the aggrandisement of a brother 
whom he detested. The country generally was 
weary of a painful and indecisive struggle. The 
Protestants were anxious to return to their homes 
and were exhausted by the sacrifices required to 
maintain so unequal a contest. To none was the 
civil war more hateful than to the Admiral himself. 



1576] Education of Henij of Bourbon. 59 

His loyalty to the King as a French noble and great 
officer of his Crown, his patriotism, his inborn love 
of order, his feelings as a Christian were alike pained 
by a war against his King, in which Frenchmen 
destroyed Frenchmen to the profit of their common 
enemies, which ruined the social order of the coun- 
try, demoralised his own adherents and was waged 
on both sides with countless circumstances of horror 
and atrocity. 

In order that the growing inclination of the Court 
to peace might be confirmed, and to secure more 
favourable terms, he determined on a movement of 
ably calculated audacity. Accompanied by the 
young Bourbon Princes and a small army of veteran 
cavalry he left Languedoc and moved rapidly on 
Paris. Acceptable terms were at once offered by 
Catherine and the King. Greater freedom of worship 
than had been allowed by previous edicts ; the 
members of the so-called '' Reformed" Church to be 
in every respect on a footing of equality with the 
Catholics and equally ehgible to all civil and military 
offices ; an amnesty for all that had happened dur- 
ing the war. Finally, as a pledge of the sincerity of 
the Court, four important fortresses were to be placed 
in the hands of the Huguenot leaders for three years : 
Montauban in Languedoc, La Charite commanding 
the Loire, Cognac in Poitou, and La Rochelle on 
the ocean. It was in vain that Pius V. andPhilip II. 
protested with loud outcries against so iniquitous a 
peace with the enemies of God and man ; the terms 
were joyfully accepted by the Protestants and rati- 
fied at St. Germains by the King (August 8, 1570). 



6o Henry of Navarre, [1555- 

So far from being crushed the Protestants after 
eight years of civil war had obtained terms which 
they would have welcomed at the outset. It is true 
that the same concessions would have meant more 
had they been granted earlier. The war had shown 
that the Huguenots were too strong a minority to 
be subdued by force, but it had also made it impos- 
sible for that minority to become a majority. The 
numbers of the sectaries had been greatly reduced, 
less by losses in the field than by massacres in the 
towns. 

According to some historians 10,000 had so per- 
ished in one year alone (1568). These victims for 
the most part belonged to the middle classes, to the 
better sort of townspeople. Many others had been 
compelled to fly the country. In war, as was natural, 
the nobles and soldiers became more and more in- 
fluential; but the great majority of these had little 
sympathy with the strict morality and discipline of 
Calvinism. Even at La Rochelle, where the ministers 
exercised an authority almost as absolute as at Geneva, 
a spirit of lawlessness had been fostered by the 
adventures and more than half piratical enterprises 
of the citizens. 

The Italian admirers of the Machiavellian state- 
craft of Catherine de' Medici, and the Protestants to 
whom she appeared a monster of dissimulation, rep- 
resent the treaty of St. Germains as the first of a 
series of measures devised to lure the Huguenots to 
destruction. Such was not the opinion of the best 
informed contemporaries. 

Walsingham, the English ambassador, assured 




4s 



i- 






ADMIRAL COLIQNY. 



1576] Education of Henry of Bourbon. 6i 

Queen Elizabeth that the peace would last. The 
King had always been averse to the civil war, the 
Guises were in disgrace, the favour of the Montmo- 
rencys and of the " Politicians " constantly growing. 
Petrucci, the Florentine envoy, wrote that the King 
was determined at all costs to avoid future conflicts 
with the Huguenots. Alava, the Spanish ambassa- 
dor, told Philip II. that Catherine was the source of 
all evil, although with her usual oaths and tears she 
had sworn that her son no longer listened to her 
advice. 

The Queen-Mother, who had been seeking an es- 
tablishment for her third daughter Margaret, believed 
that she had reason to complain of Philip II. After 
the death of his wife Elizabeth the King in reply to 
a proposal that he should marry her sister suggest- 
ed that his nephew Sebastian of Portugal would be 
a more suitable match for the young lady. Long 
negotiations followed. It was believed that the 
young King of Portugal, who had romantic visions 
of combining the saint and the hero, did not wish to 
marry at all ; he certainly showed no eagerness to 
marry Margaret of Valois. Catherine thought that 
Philip II. had not seriously attempted to overcome 
his nephew's reluctance, and in her irritation lent a 
ready ear to those who suggested that though little 
remained of the independent kingdom of Navarre, 
yet the head of the House of Bourbon, the heir of 
domains which extended from the Pyrenees to far 
beyond the Garonne, of the principality of Beam, 
of the duchies of Vendome, Beaumont and Albret, 
of the counties of Bigorre, Armagnac, Rouergue, 



62 Henry of Navarre. LI 555- 

Perigord and Marie, of the viscounties of Marsac 
and Limoges and of numerous other lordships, the 
acknowledged leader of a great and martial faction, 
was no unequal match for the third daughter even 
of a King of France. 

After the conclusion of peace Henry had been 
sent back to Beam, while his mother and the Prot- 
estant leaders remained at La Rochelle ; refusing to 
separate or to visit the Court till the provisions of the 
edict had been fully carried out. Towards the end 
of 1570 Marshal de Cosse, a prominent member of 
the moderate party was sent to assure the Queen of 
Navarre that the Government was determined to ful- 
fil its engagements, and at the same time to let it be 
known that Charles IX. would gladly see Henry of 
Bourbon a suitor for the hand of his sister. Early 
in the next year (1571) riotous mobs robbed and 
massacred the Protestants of Orange and Rouen. 
The exemplary punishment of these excesses, and 
the permission to hold a national synod of the Re- 
formed churches at La Rochelle, went far to convince 
the Huguenots of the good faith of the Court; a 
conviction which was strengthened by the eagerness 
with which the King pressed on the negotiations 
for the marriage of his brother to Queen Elizabeth, 
and the favourable reception given to Count Lewis 
of Nassau. 

The King and the Queen-Mother repeatedly in- 
vited Coligny to Court. His cousin Montmorency 
urged him to grasp so favourable an opportunity of 
overthrowing the influence of the Guises. 

The well-known story of Coligny's reception at 



1576] Marriage of Henry of Bourbon. (i-i) 

Blois, how the King embraced him again and again, 
exclaiming '' Now we have you we shall not again 
let you go," rests on no good evidence. Charles 
received the Admiral well, but with no excess of 
cordiality, while the Queen-Mother and Anjou had 
taken to their beds the day of his arrival : they were 
really ill, but the circumstances were so suspicious, 
that Coligny alarmed by the coolness of his recep- 
tion was on the point of leaving Blois. Soon, how- 
ever, he received abundant proof of royal favour and 
affection. His advice constantly prevailed in the 
King's council, where his supporters now formed the 
majority. The royal council was a large body. 
Some members were summoned by letters patent, 
while Princes of the Blood, dukes and peers, the 
great officers of the Crown and knights of the King's 
orders appear to have had a right to sit ex-officio. 
But of these privileged persons only a small number 
attended, or were expected to attend, and a change 
in policy was often marked by one set of members 
absenting themselves, their place being taken by 
others who had previously stayed away. Now the 
Guises and their most devoted adherents were no 
longer seen in the council-chamber — there was as it 
were a change of ministry favourable to the Hugue- 
nots and the Politicians. 

Meantime (winter of 1 571-1572) the negotiations 
for the marriage of Henry of Navarre and Margaret 
of Valois continued. Coligny, now persuaded that 
the King was sincere, urged Queen Jane to bring her 
son to Court, to see the young lady and to conduct 
the treaty in person. 



64 He7iry of Navarre, [1655- 

The Queen of Navarre was full of misgivings. She 
trembled for her son's religion, for his morals ; she 
could not trust the Florentine and the King whose 
bible was Machiavelli. Her ministers by their contra- 
dictory advice distracted her still further ; but finally, 
leaving the Prince at Pau, she accepted the King's 
invitation. The Court was at Blois, and there also 
was a papal legate who had been sent to protest 
against so impious a marriage and to offer once more 
the hand of the King of Portugal or of an Austrian 
Prince to Madame Marguerite. But the victory of 
Lepanto (October 7, 1571) had only increased the 
King's jealousy and dislike of Spain. All his 
thoughts, he wrote to his ambassador at Constanti- 
nople, were directed to the one object of humbling 
the power of Philip II.; he was determined to main- 
tain peace in his kingdom and to marry his sister to 
the Prince of Beam ; in no other way could he avenge 
himself on his enemies. The legate departed, in- 
dignantly refusing the customary gift of plate. 

Charles IX. received his " best beloved aunt " with 
effusive affection. The first interview with Catherine 
was satisfactory and the Queen of Navarre as she 
left the room said joyfully '' the marriage is settled." 
But the negotiations did not proceed so smoothly 
as their beginning promised. Queen Jane dreaded 
the effect on her son of the corruption she saw 
around her, she had believed it to be great, but she 
found it to be greater than she could have con- 
ceived. If he were there, she said, nothing short of 
the signal grace of God could save him.- 

With prophetic eagerness she begs him to be on 



1576] Marriage of Henry of Bourbon, 65 

his guard against the attempts that will be made to 
debauch him in his life and his religion. " It is their 
object ; they do not affect to conceal it." They wish, 
she said to Walsingham, to keep the Prince at Court 
to turn him into an atheist. If this happened, what 
greater calamity could befall him or the Cause ? 

Catherine accepted the marriage because she 
trusted to keep her future son-in-law at Court. She 
hoped that her band of lively maids of honour, her 
masques and ballets, would prove more attractive, 
than the rough Calvinist soldiers, the tedious theo- 
logians, the prayers and improving discourses at 
Nerac and Pau. If Henry were converted, the 
Protestants lost the support of the first Prince of the 
Blood, and of the most powerful vassal of the French 
Crown ; if he remained a Huguenot, his rank secured 
to him the first place among the sectaries and he 
might be the means of perplexing their councils and 
embarrassing the Admiral. Either alternative filled 
the Queen of Navarre with apprehension. " Pray, " 
she wTites to her son, '' that this marriage may not be 
made in God's anger for our punishment." Her 
letters are full of nervous irritation ; she finds it 
impossible to speak to the King or his sister ; she 
only sees their mother, who treats her with insolent 
duphcity. '' She behaves in such wise, laughing in 
my face, that you may say my patience surpasses 
Griselda's ; though I burst, I am determined not to 
lose my temper. I cannot say I lack advice ; every 
one has advice to give me and all difTerent. It is a 
marvel I can endure the annoyances I suffer. I am 
dared, insulted and worried. They even make holes 



66 Henry of Navarre. [1555- 

in the walls of my room to spy upon me." The 
poor woman, naturally self-willed and irritable, was 
all the while suffering from the disease which ended 
her life a few months later. No wonder that the 
Florentine envoy thought that her temper was 
uneven and that she was full of whims and fancies. 

In her more hopeful mood she describes Margaret 
as good-looking though somewhat stout and too 
tightly laced, and so much painted that it was dif- 
ficult to see what her face really was, sensible and 
pleasant-mannered and with great influence over her 
mother and brothers. At the same time she gives 
Henry some hints about his behaviour as a suitor. 
" Do not be afraid of speaking out, for remember 
that the impression you make at your first coming 
will determine the esteem in which you will be held. 
Wear your hair more raised, not in the style of 
Nerac, but with large locks ; I should recommend 
the last fashion as the one I prefer." 

When more despondent, she remembers that the 
young Princess has been educated in the most cor- 
rupt and abominable society, where the women woo 
the men. She certainly was clever, but that was 
only another cause for anxiety ; if she remained 
Catholic her prudence and judgment were but addi- 
tional dangers. Was Henry wiser or more expe- 
rienced than Solomon, who was misled by his 
Egyptian wife? 

We must allow that Jane showed some insight 
into the character of her future daughter-in-law, 
though it is probable that the Princess Margaret, 
whom she saw shrinking behind her mother, was not 



1576] Marriage of Henry of Bourbon. 67 

more like the Queen of Navarre of later years, in 
character, than the graceful and lively bright-haired 
girl, with eyes only too expressive, was like the 
painted and beruddled woman whose exuberant bulk 
was made disgusting and ridiculous by vast farthin- 
gales, hung round with pockets containing, it was 
reported, the embalmed hearts of dead lovers, by 
tightly laced but too scanty bodices stiffened with 
steel, and large frizzed wigs shorn from the heads of 
her flock of flaxen-haired footmen. 

Margaret of Valois was a clever, even a talented 
woman. Though her letters would not, as Brantome 
pretends, have excited the envious despair of Cicero, 
they are as free from the determination to have a 
style, the affectation which disfigures so much of the 
prose of the i6th century, as the letters of Henry IV. 
himself, and they show a more cultivated literary 
sense. Even higher praise might be given to the 
'' memoirs," which she wrote with taste and tact to 
prove herself the victim of circumstances and of the 
cruel malignity of her brother Henry HI. Henry IV. 
could never read to the end of a serious book, 
Margaret became so absorbed in what she read, that, 
fond as she was of the pleasures of the table, she 
would forget to eat and drink. In practical matters 
she had clear insight and could give sound advice, 
nor was she without some good qualities of the 
heart as well as of the head. She was a constant 
friend, though a fickle mistress, kind-hearted and 
charitable ; and her good-nature was of a better 
quality than that of her mother or her husband, 
since it proceeded neither from insensibility nor 



68 Henry of Navarre, [1555- 

indifference. Her gallantry was scandalous in an 
age of incredible licence. She indulged her love of 
eating and drinking till her size became so enormous 
that she could scarcely squeeze through an ordinary 
doorway. Her taste for music and painting, her 
extensive use of perfumes seem to show that all her 
senses imperiously demanded the satisfaction which 
they largely received. 

A disposition not averse to vice had received a 
detestable education, and she disliked the marriage 
imposed upon her ; it is not therefore surprising that 
a union which proved both loveless and childless was 
a curse to bride and bridegroom. The life and 
character of Henry of Navarre might have been 
different had he, before his moral sense was blunted 
by vice, been brought under the influence of a woman 
he both loved and respected. His subsequent rela- 
tions with his mistresses showed that his affections, 
if not his senses, were capable of constancy. 

The marriage contract was signed on April ii, 
1572. Charles IX. insisted that the wedding should 
take place in Paris, in order that he might exhibit to 
the world in the chief city of his kingdom this proof 
and pledge of his determined love of civil peace. 

The ceremony itself had been one of the questions 
most debated. Jane would not allow her son to 
countenance by his presence the idolatry of the Mass. 
It was finally arranged that Henry's uncle the 
Cardinal of Bourbon should give the nuptial bene- 
diction at the door of the Cathedral and then lead 
the pair to the high altar, but that as soon as the 
celebration of Mass bes^an, the Prince of Beam should 



1576] Maridage of Henry of Bourbon. 69 

say to one of the King's brothers, " My lord, I beg 
you to attend Mass for me," and should then, without 
leaving the church, retire into one of the side 
chapels. 

Charles IX. affected to make light of the Pope's 
refusal to grant a dispensation. If the old gentle- 
man persisted, he would take Margot by the hand 
and marry her to his cousin in the Protestant meet- 
ing-house. 

The Queen of Navarre did not live to see the 
marriage. She had been unwell when she came to 
Blois ; perplexities, vexations of every kind had taken 
away sleep and appetite. All the symptoms of her 
illness appear to have been natural, but her death 
was generally attributed to the arts of Catherine de' 
Medici and her Florentine perfumer. 

Henry of Navarre was in Poitou on his way from 
Beam when the news of his mother's death reached 
him. He continued his journey and entered the city 
in the first week of August, accompanied by his 
cousin Conde and eight hundred gentlemen dressed 
in mourning. 

The marriage was celebrated on August 18, 1572. 
Margaret, accompanied by her mother and brothers, 
by the great officers of the Crown and the principal 
members of the Court, met the young Prince of 
Navarre, who was attended by his cousins the 
Prince of Conde and the Count of Soissons, by the 
Admiral, the Count of La Rochefoucauld and other 
Huguenot nobles, upon a great stage covered with 
cloth of gold, erected before the portal of Notre 
Dame. The bride, glittering with the Crown jewels, 



7o Hefiry of Navarre. [1555- 

was adorned as a queen, with crown and ermine, the 
train, four yards long, of her blue mantle carried by- 
three princesses. The bridegroom and his attend- 
ants had laid aside their mourning and were dressed 
in all the gay magnificence which the fashion of the 
time allowed. 

Henry and his Huguenots walked in the nave of 
the Cathedral, while the bride heard Mass in the 
quire. The Admiral noticed hung round the walls 
the standards he had lost at Montcoutour ; soon, he 
exclaimed, they should be replaced by more glorious 
trophies won from the common enemy. 

The Duke of Anjou organised the feasts in 
honour of his sister's wedding, questionable and ill- 
omened revels, in which the King, his brothers, the 
Bourbon princes and the young nobles of both par- 
ties joined, while the older Protestants, witnessed 
these scenes of sinister and ill-timed debauchery with 
invincible repugnance. "As before a storm," says a 
contemporary," the ocean is seen to heave and mutter, 
so men's minds appeared to be moved by a prophetic 
horror and foreboding of the evils so soon to come." 
The air was heavy with a feeling of disquiet, alarm- 
ing reports spread on every side, and the pulpits of 
Paris re-echoed with exhortations to intolerance and 
bloodshed. 

More serious questions than the marriage of the 
Princess Margaret had divided the councils of the 
French King during the past year, questions which 
involved the whole future policy of France and the 
fate of the Huguenots. 



1576] Marriage of Henry of Bourbon. 71 

At no period has the connection between the 
domestic and foreign policy of the states of western 
Europe been closer than during the sixteenth cen- 
tury. The Protestants in England, in France, in 
the Low Countries, in northern Germany, were con- 
scious that their interests were the same. 

At the beginning of the eighteenth century we 
find a European league formed to check the pre- 
ponderance of the House of Bourbon, which, like 
the power of Philip II. a century and a half earlier, 
appeared dangerous to the independence of other 
nations. But resistance to Spain in the name of re- 
ligious and political liberty meant something very 
different from resistance to France for the preserva- 
tion of the balance of power. Spain was at once a 
domestic and a foreign enemy to the Englishmen 
who thought like Cecil and Walsingham, to the 
French Huguenots, to the patriots of the Nether- 
lands ; and they had more in common with her 
enemies, though foreigners, than with countrymen, 
who were her. friends. A check to the policy of 
Philip II. a defeat of his partisans in one country, 
reacted upon the balance of parties elsewhere, gave 
confidence to his opponents, and diminished the 
authority of his allies. Hence to understand the 
course of French politics it is often necessary to 
bear in mind contemporary events in England and 
in the Netherlands. 

The destinies of the three countries were never 
more closely interwoven than during the time which 
elapsed between the Peace of St. Germains and the 
Massacre of St. Bartholomew : indeed, that tremen- 



72 Henry of Navarre. [1555- 

dous catastrophe itself may be said to have been 
occasioned as much by the vacillation of Elizabeth 
of England and by the course of events in the 
Netherlands, as by the jealous and unscrupulous 
ambition of the Queen-Mother, the party hatred 
and private vengeance of the Guises and the fanati- 
cism of the Catholic mob. 

The all-important question for the Low Countries, 
for France, and for Europe was: could Charles IX. 
be induced to take part openly in the struggle 
against Spain ? This was the stake against which 
Coligny was willing to set his life. With the assist- 
ance of the Politicians, of soldiers who preferred 
the honour to be gained in fighting against Spain to 
the questionable triumphs of civil war, the Admiral 
hoped to carry through his policy, — if possible with 
the good will of the Queeil-Mother, but if that 
might not be, then, in spite of her opposition. 

It was mainly on the English marriage that 
Coligny relied as the means of winning the support 
of Catherine. Had Elizabeth been able to make up 
her mind, had the marriage been concluded, a war 
with Spain would have followed, and it is probable 
that " Walsingham and Burghley were right in be- 
lieving that the course of European history would 
have been different and the power of the Papacy 
would have been rolled back in one broad wave 
across the Alps and the Pyrenees." 

But Elizabeth could not make up her mind, and 
the success of Coligny in establishing his influence 
over the King became the chief source of his dan- 
ger. It seemed as if peaceably and by moral means 



1576] Marriage of Henry of Bourbon, "jt^ 

he was about to succeed in doing what physical 
force had failed to effect at Meaux, when the 
Huguenots had attempted to seize the young King 
and to remove him from under the control of his 
mother. Henceforth therefore her opposition to 
and hatred of the Admiral became desperate and 
irreconcilable. Her first object now was by fair 
means or foul to remove an influence fatal to her own. 

In the early summer of 1572, when Holland and Zea- 
land were in arms and the Huguenots pouring over 
the frontiers of Hainault to the assistance of the 
rebels, peace or war with Spain meant the predomi- 
nance of Catherine or of Coligny. 

The King's hatred of Spain, his jealousy and sus- 
picion of Anjou, the great personal influence of 
Coligny, the favour of Teligny, the Admiral's son- 
in-law, of La Rochefoucauld and other young Hugue- 
not nobles, the obvious advantage of strengthening 
the royal authority at home by a successful foreign 
war were thrown into the scale against the authority, 
confirmed by long habit, of the Queen-Mother, the 
advice of councillors who from deference to her, 
from jealousy of her opponents, or from sincere con- 
viction pointed out the danger of entering upon so 
formidable a struggle without any formal offensive 
and defensive alliance with England, with an empty 
treasury and a country exhausted by war and divided 
by faction. For if the war meant, as it did, the pre- 
dominance of the Protestants and their friends, 
those zealous Catholics, and they were many, who 
preferred their religion to their country would be 
the best allies of Phihp H. 



74 He7iry of Navarre. [1555- 

Had the Nassaus and their Huguenot confeder- 
ates been more successful in the Low Countries it is 
possible that Coligny might have prevailed. 

More than once it was generally believed that the 
King had determined to declare war. But at two 
meetings of the council held on August 6th and 9th, 
attended by all the officers and ministers of the 
crown, a large majority pronounced aga.inst a breach 
with Spain. Charles IX. yielded to their representa- 
tions and to the urgent and private expostulations 
of his mother, who, says Tavannes in the memoirs 
of his father, one of her most intimate and trusted 
advisers, threw herself at the King's feet and burst- 
ing into tears begged him to allow her to leave the 
Court, since after all her labours on his behalf he no 
longer had any confidence in her, and abandoned 
himself to the councils of his enemies. But even 
yet her victory was not assured. On August loth 
Walsingham wrote to Burghley that '' though the 
Admiral cannot obtain what were requisite and 
necessary for the advancement of the cause, yet doth 
he obtain somewhat in conference with the King." 
Charles IX. in a letter of the same date to his am- 
bassador in England told him that he must exert 
himself to induce Elizabeth to help Orange. It was 
evident that the frank acceptance by the Queen of 
England of the French alliance or any decisive re- 
verse to the Spanish arms might again turn the scale 
in favour of war and of Coligny. 

'' The Queen," says Tavannes, '' considering that 
not only the fortunes of France, but, what touched 
her far more nearly, her power and the safety of 



1576] SL Bartholomew, 75 

Anjou were at stake, resolved with M. d'Anjou and 
two other advisers to compass the death of the Ad- 
miral, believing that the whole Huguenot party Avas 
centred in him ; and trusting to remedy all — i. e., 
prevent the outbreak of civil war — by the marriage 
of her daughter to the King of Navarre and by 
throwing the blame of the murder on the Guises, to 
the assassination of whose father the Admiral had 
been privy." 

By making the Guises responsible for her crime, 
Catherine trusted, it is said, to obtain an even more 
satisfactory result. She expected that the Hugue- 
nots would rush to arms and attack the Guises, that 
the populace of Paris would seek to protect their 
favourites, the leaders of the faction of Lorraine, 
and that the Montmorencys and their friends would 
support the Huguenots; whichever side prevailed 
would be exhausted by a bloody and obstinate con- 
flict and might be fallen upon and annihilated by the 
King's troop's, as disturbers of the public peace ! 

All the great nobles of France, gathered together 
in Paris to celebrate the wedding of the King of 
Navarre, would thus be destroyed and the Queen 
and the Duke of Anjou left without rivals in the 
King's council. Moreover, this great end would be 
attained without incurring the odium of the crime ; 
it would appear to have been the unavoidable result 
of the violence of faction, and would not commit 
the Crown to irreconcilable hostility with either the 
CathoHc or Protestant party. 

After the wedding of the King of Navarre, Cath- 
erine and Anjou sent for the young Duke of Guise 



76 Henry of Navarre. [1555- 



and his mother to concert measures for the death of 
the man who, as they pretended and perhaps be- 
Heved, had encouraged the assassin of Duke Francis. 
A bravo formerly in the service of Anjou and at 
that time of the Guises was stationed behind the 
bUnds of a house which the Admiral used to pass on 
his way to the Louvre. Three days he lay in wait. 
But when the opportunity came, although his piece 
was loaded with three balls he only wounded his 
victim. Coligny at once sent to inform the King of 
what had happened ; his messenger found Charles 
IX. playing tennis with Henry of Guise and 
Teligny ; turning pale and dashing his racquet to 
the ground he exclaimed with many oaths, '' Are we 
never to have peace ? " and went to his room " with 
sad and downcast countenance." 

Soon the King of Navarre, the Prince of Conde 
and a crowd of nobles demanded an audience and 
the King's permission to leave a town where their 
lives were in danger. Full, apparently, of grief and 
anger Charles declared he would take such vengeance 
as should never be forgotten on those who were 
guilty of the outrage. Nor could his sincerity be 
doubted when he ordered the gates of the city to 
be shut to prevent the escape of the would-be assas- 
sins, intrusted the inquiry into the crime to an 
impartially chosen commission, forbade the towns- 
people to arm or to close their shops, sent a detach- 
ment of his guards to protect the Admiral, and 
offered lodgings to the Huguenot gentlemen near 
Coligny's house, or in the Louvre. 

After dinner Charles came accompanied by his 



1576] 



St Bartholomew. "JJ 



Court, his mother and his brothers to visit the Ad- 
miral, whom he overwhelmed with demonstrations 
of affection. '' My father," he said, '' the pain of 
the wound is yours, but the insult and the wrong are 
mine," and again he swore with his usual oaths that 
the guilty should dearly rue their deed. The Queen 
and Anjou were filled with apprehension and as soon 
as they had reached the Tuileries sent Gondi, Count 
of Retz, formerly the King's tutor, and who had still 
much influence over him, to pacify him. 

On the next morning the Protestant nobles delib- 
erated whether they should leave Paris, taking with 
them the Admiral, wounded as he was; but Coligny 
and the majority were persuaded of the King's good 
faith ; to fly would be to abandon him to the Guises 
and to make civil war inevitable. They determined 
to stay, and Catherine heard that they intended on 
the next day to present themselves at Court in a 
body, and to accuse the Duke of Guise of attempt- 
ing the hfe of Coligny. It was probable that Henry 
of Guise would not care to deny his complicity in an 
act which established his popularity among the mob 
and the friars, but would excuse himself by saying 
that he had acted by the authority of the Duke of 
Anjou, the lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Thus 
the vengeance of the Protestants and the anger of 
the King would fall on the Queen-Mother and her 
favourite son. Catherine felt that she must act, and 
act at once. Accompanied by Anjou, by Gondi, by 
Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers, Birago, a Milanese, the 
unworthy successor of the Chancellor I'Hopital, and 
Marshal Tavannes, she requested an audience of the 



yS Henry of Navarre. [1555- 

King. There are three fairly authentic accounts, 
which agree in the main, of what passed at this inter- 
view ; nor is it hard to understand how the half mad 
King, whose nature had been prepared for crime, 
whose nobler qualities had been perverted or stunted, 
was harassed and perplexed and driven into the toils 
by the infernal art of his advisers. No argument 
was neglected which might overcome his reluctance, 
not so much to break his faith, as to sacrifice men 
for whom he seems to have felt sincere respect or 
liking. 

The dangerous ambition of the Huguenots, their 
turbulence and previous attacks on the royal author- 
ity, the discontent of the Catholics at the favours 
shown to the heretics, and their determination if the 
King did not listen to their complaints to form a 
Holy League under a captain-general of their own, and 
save the realm in his spite, — all this and much more 
was urged. For an hour and a half Charles resisted, 
but stung at length by the imputation that he was 
too timid to act, he leapt up in a frenzy of passion, 
cursing everybody and everything : " By God's death 
since you insist that the Admiral must be killed I 
consent; but with him every Huguenot in France 
must perish, that not one may remain to reproach 
me with his death ; and what you do, see that it 
be done quickly." So speaking, he rushed like a 
madman from the room. 

When the King's assent had been obtained, the 
arrangements for the massacre were soon concerted 
between the Queen-Mother, Anjou, the Guises and 
the leaders of the Parisian mob. The signal was to 





MEDAL OF CHARLES IX. STRUCK TO COMMEMORATE THE MASSACRE OF 
ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 





MEDAL OF GREGORY XIII. ^ STRUCK TO COMMEMORATE THE MASSACRE 
OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 



1576] S^. Bartholomew. 79 

be given that very night by the bells of the church 
nearest to the Louvre. 

As the fatal moment approached Charles IX. 
attempted to revoke the permission extorted from 
him. Even Catherine felt some misgivings, but it 
was too late. '* We went," so the Duke of Anjou 
during a sleepless night told his physician, ^' we went 
to a room in the gate tower of the Louvre, to watch 
from a window which looked into the yard the 
beginning of the execution. We had not been there 
long, and we were considering the consequences of so 
great an enterprise, when we suddenly heard the 
report of a pistol. I do not know where the shot 
was fired, nor whether it hurt any one, but the mere 
sound struck us with strange terrors and apprehen- 
sions of the great disorders that were then about to 
be committed. We suddenly and hastily sent a 
gentleman to M. de Guise, bidding him retire to his 
house, and to beware of attempting anything against 
the Admiral. But our messenger came back, and 
said that it was too late, and that the Admiral was 
already dead." 

Guise himself and the Duke of Angouleme, a 
bastard of Henry IL, superintended the murder of" 
Coligny. The guards who were sent by the King 
for his protection were the first to fire upon his 
retainers. Coligny, hearing the uproar, knew that 
his last hour was come. He told the great surgeon 
Ambrose Pare, himself a Protestant, and others 
who had been watching in his room to escape by the 
roof ; only one of his attendants, a German, refused 
to leave him. The murderers burst open the door 



8o Henry of Navarre. ti655- 

but they were so abashed by the fearless dignity of 
their victim, that they stood hesitating on the thres- 
hold. One only, a foreigner, a Bohemian who was 
half drunk stepped forward : *' Are you the Ad- 
miral?" and with an oath felled him to the ground. 
The others hacked him with their swords. " Have 
you finished?" shouted the Duke of Guise from the 
courtyard ; " throw him out of the window for us to 
see with our own eyes." Even yet there seemed to 
be some life in the body, for a moment it clung to 
the window bars. The features were crushed and 
scarcely to be distinguished. Angouleme wiped 
away the blood from the face, and recognising the 
Admiral, kicked it as he turned away. When Guise 
in his turn fell by the assassin's sword and his 
corpse was spurned by the man he had despised and 
dared, the accomplice of his present crime, it was 
remembered that he also had struck the dead hero 
with his foot. 

So perished Admiral Coligny, one of the noblest 
characters and of the ablest soldiers and statesmen 
produced by the French Reformation. 

Aristotle describes the man of perfect character as 
'slow and deliberate of speech, considerate to his 
inferiors, but unaccommodating to his equals and 
haughty to his superiors, little disposed to frequent 
places where he has to give way to others, more ready 
to confer than to receive obligations, and with a high 
and just conceit of his own merits. Devout Chris- 
tian as he was, the Admiral would have satisfied the 
pagan philosopher's ideal. But a virtue less proud 
and austere would not have given him the influence 



1576] 



6V. Bartholomew. 8i 



which he needed to control the excesses, the dis- 
cordant aims and councils of his party. The vanity 
of the Pluguenot nobles yielded to a pride better 
founded and more masterful than their own. As 
a general, he knew how to effect great results with 
small means and was never more formidable than 
when defeated. 

Coligny was a Puritan by conviction and tempera- 
ment, but a Puritan of the French Renaissance. His 
house of Chatillon sur Loing, where the day began 
with prayers, which he himself conducted, contained 
choice collections of books and works of art, and 
was as hospitable to scholars and artists as the 
palace of a Montefeltro or a Medici. The interest 
in literature and culture which somewhat redeems 
the bestial licence of the French Court in the i6th 
century made Calvinism itself more amiable. 

'' There," said the Elector Palatine, showing the 
portrait of his victim to Henry of Anjou, ''there is 
the most virtuous man and the wisest, and the 
greatest captain of Europe, whose children I have 
invited to live with me, lest they should be torn in 
pieces like their father by those French hounds." 

But there is perhaps no greater tribute to the 
Admiral's integrity than the praise of Brantome, 
who belonged to the faction of the Guises, yet main- 
tains that no selfish motive led Coligny to draw his 
sword, and that had he been less patriotic and less 
loyal he would not have perished a victim to his 
hatred of civil strife. 

The death of the Admiral was the signal for the 
slaughter of the Huguenot gentlemen who were 

6 



82 Henry of Navarre, [1555- 

lodged in the neighbourhood. It was in the Louvre 
itself that the massacre was most odious, if not most 
cruel. The Protestant nobles who were sleeping in 
the palace had been expressly invited by the King, 
and were protected by the duty which he owed to 
them as his guests as well as his subjects, by his 
honour as a prince and as a gentleman. One by one 
they were summoned and cut down by the Swiss 
guards under the very eyes of the King, who, mad 
with the excitement of his crime, himself urged on 
the butchery. His victims as they fell reproached 
him with his broken faith. 

When day dawned the great bell of the Hotel de 
Ville summoned the rabble of the city to complete 
the slaughter. On the first day the massacre was 
chiefly confined to the Huguenot nobles and their 
followers. The municipality and the most respect- 
able citizens begged the King to put an end to the 
disorders which they said were committed by the 
princes and nobles of his Court, and by the dregs of 
the populace. Charles IX. asked them to assist in 
quelling the riot which he affected to deplore. But 
nothing was done, the bloodshed and horrors of the 
second and third days outdid the atrocities of the 
first. Every evil passion, fanaticism, hate, envy, 
lust and avarice raged uncontrolled, in a hideous 
scene of anarchy and carnage. Catholic tradesmen 
murdered their Huguenot competitors, needy cour- 
tiers hounded on the mob to slaughter their credit- 
ors, men were killed for their offices, for their houses, 
for their wives. But most horrible perhaps was the 
ferocity of the mob, of the women and even of the 



1576] 



SL Bartholomew, 83 



little children. A ferocity, which the dregs of Paris 
had shown in the civil wars of Armagnac and Bur- 
gundy and which they were again to display in 1793. 
Women were ripped up, babies spitted on pikes or 
dragged to the river by children scarcely older than 
themselves. 

At the lowest computation 2,000 Protestants per- 
ished in Paris, and these men were the flower of the 
Huguenot nobility, the most enhghtened and ener- 
getic of the professional and mercantile classes of 
the capital. It is remarkable that the boldest sol- 
diers and proudest nobles in France allowed them- 
selves to be slaughtered like sheep, so completely 
were these men, whom their enemies accused of 
plotting to seize the capital and the King's person, 
taken by surprise. Only one man, and he a lawyer, 
attempted resistance, barred his doors and kept his 
assailants at bay, till his house was stormed by a 
company of the royal guards. 

The Count of Montgomery, the vidame of Char- 
tres, with other nobles who were lodged in the Fau- 
bourg St. Germain, had timely warning and escaped. 

The Duke of Guise, suspecting that an attempt 
might be made to throw the odium of what had 
happened upon his faction, was anxious that his 
moderation should contrast with the mad frenzy of 
bloodshed into which the King had fallen. " He is 
not," the English envoy wrote to Cecil, '' so bloody, 
neither did he kill any man himself, but saved divers ; 
he spake openly that for the Admiral's death he was 
glad, for he knew him to be his enemy, but for the 
rest the King had put to death such as might do 



84 Henry of Navarre. [1555- 

him very good service." Following the example of 
the Guises, other influential Catholics saved some of 
the victims who took refuge in their houses. A few 
were even protected by the favour of the Court ; 
among these was the famous potter Bernard Palissy, 
who escaped in his workshop in the garden of the 
Tuileries, to perish eighteen years later of want and 
ill usage in the prisons of the League. 

The horrors of Paris were repeated on a smaller 
scale, but with not less atrocious circumstances, at 
Meaux, Orleans, Angers, Troyes, Bourges, Lyons, 
Rouen, Toulouse, Bordeaux and other places. Al- 
though not a few of the governors refused to obey 
the orders of the Court and the tranquillity of some 
provinces was comparatively, undisturbed, yet at 
least 20,000 victims perished. 

The Queen-Mother and her advisers had, it is 
said, at first intended that the King of Navarre and 
the Prince of Conde should share the fate of the 
other Huguenots. But their individual importance 
appeared too insignificant, their rank too exalted. 
It was not worth while to incur the odium of put- 
ting to death the first Prince of the Blood, the hus- 
band of the King's sister, in order to guard against 
any danger that seemed likely to arise from this 
*' half-fledged kinglet," who appeared less eager to 
share in the councils of his party than in the revels 
and debaucheries of his royal brothers. 

Margaret of Valois gives in her memoirs an ap- 
parently faithful account of the events of the fatal 
night of St. Bartholomew, so far as they concerned 
herself and her husband. " The Huguenots," she 



15761 S^. Bartholomew. 85 

says, " suspected me because I was a Catholic ; the 
Catholics, because I had married the King of Na- 
varre. So that I heard nothing of what was going 
on till the evening, when, as I was sitting on a chest 
in my mother's room by the side of my sister, the 
Duchess of Lorraine, whom I saw to be very sad, 
the Queen-Mother noticed me and told me to go to 
bed. As I was curtesying to her my sister laid 
hold of my arm and burst into tears saying, ' For 
God's sake, sister, don't go.' I was greatly fright- 
ened and seeing this the Queen, my mother, spoke 
very sharply to my sister, and forbade her to say 
anything to me, adding that, please God, no harm 
would happen to me, but that, come what might, go 
I must, lest something should be suspected. I did 
not hear what was said, but again and very roughly 
my mother told me to go. 

'' As soon as I was in my room I threw myself on 
my knees and prayed God to protect me, though I 
knew not from what or against whom. 

'' Meanwhile the king, my husband, had gone to bed 
and sent word to me to come to him. I found his 
bed surrounded by thirty or forty Huguenots whom 
I did not y^X, know, for I had only been married a 
few days. All night long they remained talking of 
what had happened to the Admiral, and determining 
as soon as day broke to ask for redress against M. 
de Guise ; and if it were not granted, then to seek it 
for themselves. As for me the tears of my sister 
weighed on my mind and I could not sleep for fear 
of some unknown evil. At dawn, the King, my 
husband, said he would go and play tennis till 



86 Henry of Navarre. [1555- 

King Charles was awake, having made up his mind 
to ask him at once to do justice. He then left my 
room, and his gentlemen with him. Seeing that it 
was light, and thinking that the danger of which my 
sister had spoken was passed, and being heavy with 
drowsiness, I told my nurse to lock the door, so that 
I might sleep undisturbed. An hour later, when I 
was fast asleep, some one came beating with hands 
and feet against the door and shouting ' Navarre, 
Navarre ! ' My nurse thinking that it was my hus- 
band ran to open. It was a gentleman wounded by 
a sword-thrust in the elbow, and his arm cut by a 
halberd, who rushed into my room pursued by four 
archers. Seeking safety, he threw himself on my 
bed [no doubt a four-poster with curtains out of the 
comparative privacy of which her husband had 
talked with his gentlemen]. Feehng this man 
clutching me, I threw myself into the space between 
the bed and the wall, where, he still grasping me, we 
rolled over, both screaming and both equally fright- 
ened. Fortunately, the Captain of my Guards, M. 
de Nangay, came by, who saw me in such plight, 
that sorry as he was he could not help laughing, but 
drove the archers out of the room and gave me the 
life of the poor gentleman, who was still clinging to 
me, and whom I caused to be tended and nursed in 
my dressing-room till he was quite cured. While- 1 
changed my night-dress, for he had covered me with 
his blood, M. de Nangaytold me what had happened, 
but assured me that my husband was in the King's 
room and in no danger. Making me throw on a 
dressing-gown, he then led me to the room of my 



1576] S^. Bartholomew. Sy 

sister Madame de Lorraine, which I reached more 
dead than alive ; just as I was going into the ante- 
room a gentleman trying to escape from the archers 
who were pursuing him fell stabbed three paces from 
me. I too fell half fainting into the arms of M. de 
Nangay and felt as if the same blow had pierced us 
both." 

Meantime the King of Navarre and the Prince of 
Conde had been summoned to the King's presence. 
All that had happened, had, he told them, been done 
by his orders. Henceforward he would tolerate no 
other religion in his dominions than the Roman 
Catholic. They had allowed themselves to be made 
the leaders of his enemies, and their lives were justly 
forfeit. But, as they were his kinsmen and connec- 
tions, he would pardon them on condition that they 
conformed to the church of their ancestors ; if not 
they must prepare to be treated like their friends. 

Navarre, surprised and disconcerted by the unex- 
pected catastrophe, muttered some ambiguous words ; 
Conde more boldly replied, that he was accountable 
for his religion to God alone. They were then dis- 
missed with threats of the Bastille or death, should 
they be obstinate. 

After some weeks the cautious and measured re- 
sistance of Henry and the bolder defiance of Conde 
alike yielded to their fears. The latter indeed, after 
he had been once dragged to Mass, was zealous in 
the observances of his new relig;ion ; he was, laughed 
the courtiers, so busy crossing himself in season and 
out, that he had no time to notice the love passages 
between his Princess and Anjou. 



88 Henry of Navarre. [1555- 

Henry's life was now safe, perhaps it had never been 
seriously threatened, but it would not be easy to 
imagine a more difficult and dangerous position than 
that in which he now found himself. The eight 
hundred gentlemen who had accompanied him to 
his wedding were slain or fled, there was none near 
him to warn him or advise, powerless as he appeared 
in the hands of his mother-in-law. Catherine sug- 
gested to her daughter, if the latter may be believed, 
that a divorce might easily be procured, which would 
have deprived him of such security as the position 
of the King's brother-in-law conferred. But Mar- 
garet dechned to be a party to any such scheme, 
and, though she had no affection for her husband, 
appears at this crisis of his fortunes to have played 
the part of a loyal friend, helping him by her advice 
to thread his way through the mazes of a Court, 
than which none was ever more disturbed by un- 
scrupulous intrigue, by mutual hatred and suspicion. 

It was indeed a strange stage on which this beard- 
less youth of nineteen, this King, with more nose 
than kingdom, as the courtiers jested, was called to 
play his perilous part ; still reeking with the blood 
of the tragedy just enacted, crowded with a motley 
crew of cut-throats, courtesans and adventurers, 
elbowing nobles, ladies and princes, who differed 
from them little in manners, dress or decency of 
hfe. 

" In that Court," says an eye-witness, " common 
sin seemed too near virtue to please, and he was reck- 
oned to show little spirit who was content to be the 
gallant of but one adulteress." There everything, 



1576] 



SL Bartholomew. 89 

another contemporary declares, was tolerated, except 
a decent life and virtuous conversation. There, too, 
was " hate hard by lust," and the general profligacy 
was accompanied by a violence of manners such as 
we cannot easily realise. Flown with insolence and 
wine, the princes and their minions ranged the streets, 
insulting the women, beating and wounding inoffen- 
sive citizens and engaging in bloody and fatal 
broils with their rivals in debauchery. 

Such was the example set in the highest places. 
The Kings of France, Poland and Navarre and their 
attendants, after a hideous orgy which began with a 
banquet served by naked women, stormed and sacked 
the house of a gentleman, who had offended Henry 
of Anjou by refusing to marry his cast-off mistress. 
Nor did this exploit attract attention as anything 
out of the common course. 

Eight thousand gentlemen were killed in duels 
during the reign of Henry IV., and probably no 
fewer during the previous twenty years. The 
Romans, a moralist complained, left the duel and the 
point of honour to gladiators and to the dregs of 
their slaves. Now to be the first to break through 
the ranks of the enemy, to plant the standard on the 
breach, to rally a flying squadron, is no proof of 
courage — courage can only be shown in a quarrel 
about a dog or hawk or harlot. 

To kill an enemy in fair combat was a source of 
legitimate pride, but it was scarcely reckoned dis- 
honourable to get rid of him by assassination. Writ- 
ing a few years later, the diarist L'Estoile remarks, 
that the gentry following the example of the great 



QO Henry of Navarre. [1555- 

nobles were beginning to have recourse to assassina- 
tion instead of to the duel. The annals of one 
princely house will furnish us with sufificieht exam- 
ples. The Duke of Mayenne killed with his own 
hand a soldier of fortune who had the assurance to 
propose to marry his step-daughter, the son of Henry 
of Guise proved his manhood by stabbing the Cap- 
tain St. Pol,, the Duke of Aumale sought to assas- 
sinate the Duke of Epernon, the Count of Chaligny 
murdered Chicot the Court jester. Maurevert, a 
hireling bravo of the Guises, who, after failing to 
assassinate Coligny, killed by treachery a Huguenot 
gentleman, his benefactor, was made a knight of the 
order of St. Michael by Charles IX. But nothing 
perhaps is more significant than that, when Aubigne 
accuses his admired master Henry IV. of seeking to 
compass his assassination, either because he had 
refused to pander to his licentious amours, or, as he 
would have us believe, from jealousy of his martial 
renown, he evidently does not suspect that he is 
bringing a monstrous and improbable charge against 
the Prince, whom he elsewhere so loudly praises. 
Even the women were prompt in the use of the 
dagger. Madame de Chateauneuf, discovering the 
infidelity of her husband, stabbed him '' in right 
manly fashion " then and there with her own hand. 
Never have the unbridled ferocity and savage pas- 
sions of the barbarian shown themselves in closer 
and more startling contrast to the artificial corrup- 
tions and effeminate graces of an apparently decadent 
society. 

The most prominent actors were worthy of the 



1576] SL Bartholomew. 91 

scene and the drama. The half frenzied King dis- 
trusted all around him, and none more than his 
brother Anjou and his mother, by whom he had 
allowed himself to be persuaded to sacrifice the one 
man who had touched his better nature, and to 
exchange his dreams of honourable renown for 
eternal infamy. Charles IX. was capricious, violent, 
liable to sudden starts and gusts of passion. In his 
fits of fury, he lost all control over his actions, and 
showed in his sports a morbid cruelty and love of 
bloodshed. Yet he was perhaps the best of his 
family. He kept clear in some measure of the 
shameless immorality which disgraced so many of 
his contemporaries ; he had real feeling for music 
and poetry ; he addressed Ronsard in well known 
lines not inferior to anything written by that poet. 
He was not incapable of being influenced by noble 
motives, or by a noble character, if brought into 
contact with it. We have seen the ascendancy 
Coligny obtained over him, and towards the misera- 
ble end of his life, he befriended and clung to his 
brother-in-law Henry of Navarre, recognising in him 
some sparks of generosity, manliness and honour 
wanting in his own brothers. 

Next to the King, says a satirist, came one who 
appeared better skilled to judge of the harlots of the 
Court, better composed for love — smooth chin, pale 
face, the gestures of a woman, the eye of Sardanapa- 
lus ; and he goes on to describe how this ambiguous 
thing appeared w^ithout a blush at a Court ball, its 
hair full of strings and pearls under an Italian cap, 
its smooth face rouged and whitened, the body of 



92 Henry of Navarre. [1555- 

the doublet cut low like a woman's with long sleeves 
falling to the ground, a painted courtesan rather than 
a prince— a second Nero, and worse than Nero, fed 
from his cradle on poisons, secret wiles and treachery. 
The picture of course is overcharged — even Henry 
of Valois had some qualities not wholly abject. He 
was neither a madman like Charles IX. nor an ambi- 
tious and meddlesome fool like his younger brother 
Alengon. He had insight into men and things. He 
could speak with weight and dignity ; he had more 
than once given proof of personal courage. But the 
influence of his mother, the evil atmosphere in which 
he had been brought up, had at an early age encour- 
aged a luxuriant growth of vices and follies which 
choked his better qualities. He was so entirely 
without any moral sense, that not only did it seem as 
if good and evil were indifferent to him, but also as 
if he had lost all measure of the relative importance 
of the objects he pursued. 

Of the three sons of Henry H., the youngest, 
Francis Duke of Alengon, was the most contemptible, 
inability and even in character; and although, as a 
contrast to the shameless effeminacy of iiis brother 
Anjou, he affected a rough frankness and martial 
bearing, he was not less false, or less corrupt. If all 
treachery were banished from earth, said Margaret of 
Valois of this her favourite brother, he had enough 
to re-stock the world. 

Next in importance to the Princes of the Blood, 
was the head of the younger branch of the House of 
Lorraine, the youthful Henry of Guise — courting 
popularity, affable and splendid, concealing an 




HENRY III. 



15761 -^^- Bartholomew. 93 

insatiable and unscrupulous ambition under the 
exterior of a soldier and a man of pleasure. 

United in their amusements and debaucheries, 
these young Princes were divided by their ambition 
and by the interests of those who had attached them- 
selves to their fortunes. 
« 

Catherine de' Medici no doubt was well pleased 
with the success of her policy. The Admiral, w^hose 
influence over the King would have been fatal to her 
ambition, was dead. Six hundred of the most prom- 
inent Huguenot nobles had perished, and a blow had 
been dealt to their party from which it was believed 
that it would not readily recover. 

The French Court showed a little consistency in 
the accounts which it gave of the events of the 24th 
of August. Naturally it did not wish to present the 
massacre in the same light to Elizabeth and to the 
Protestant Princes of Germany as to the Pope and 
Philip of Spain. But the version which on the whole 
it seemed desirable to have accepted was that the 
Huguenots had formed a conspiracy against the 
Crown, that the King had been compelled to take 
measures to defend himself, but that the excesses 
committed had proceeded from the hostility of the 
Houses of Guise and Chatillon, and from the uncon- 
trollable religious zeal of the Parisians. 

To Catherine the massacre was merely a domestic 
incident ; she did not intend to allow it to influence 
the foreign policy of France. What she had ob- 
jected to had been not the policy which Coligny 
urged upon the King, but Coligny himself. It is 
true that she had shrunk from a formal declaration 



94 Henry of Navarre. [1555- 

of war against Spain, but she was ready to vie with 
Queen Ehzabeth in helping the rebels and harrying 
the subjects of a Prince still, in diplomatic phrase, 
her good friend and ally. 

Various circumstances tended to encourage Cath- 
erine in the belief that a government so stained with 
murder and perfidy, execrated by half Europe, could, 
up to a certain point, adopt as its own and carry on 
the policy of the Admiral. 

At the first report of the blow, the fatal blow as 
it was supposed, dealt to the Protestant cause in 
France, Orange advancing to the relief of Mons was 
driven back into Holland. The rebellion was crushed 
in the southern provinces, the garrisons and popula- 
tions which had refused to admit the Spanish troops 
were exterminated. Holland and Zealand still re- 
sisted, but their resistance seemed hopeless unless 
they could obtain help from no matter what quarter. 
It was just because her crime had been so fatal to 
them, that the Nassaus could not refuse the hand 
which Catherine held out, red though it was with 
the blood of their brethren. 

Nor did Queen Elizabeth venture to break with 
the French Court, fearing lest it should be driven 
into an alliance with Spain. The indignation of the 
English people was indeed deeply stirred, and the 
Queen gave some satisfaction to their feelings by 
the theatrical severity of her reception of the French 
ambassador, when he attempted to justify his Gov- 
ernment. Cecil, whose sympathy with the Protes- 
tants of the continent was deeper than that of his 
mistress, ventured to condemn in harsher terms the 



1576] Results of the Massacre. 95 

unexampled infamy of a crime committed in the 
presence of the King and in violation of his pHghted 
word, but he too felt that even in such a cause, Eng- 
land could not venture to quarrel with her only ally. 

It is not probable that Catherine quickly realised 
how completely her master-stroke had failed in at- 
taining the result she expected in France. The 
Huguenots were stunned for a space by the violence 
of the blow. The death of the Admiral and of so 
many of their leading men threw the organisation 
of the party out of gear. Many who had joined the 
Protestants from interested motives abandoned a 
cause which they considered desperate ; others af- 
fected to see in this disaster the judgment of heaven, 
and followed Navarre and Conde to Mass. Nothing 
but a conviction of the hopelessness of further re- 
sistance could have induced La None, the Knight 
without reproach, the Bayard of his party, to be- 
come the agent of the murderers of his friends and 
to undertake the task of persuading La Rochelle to 
admit a royal garrison. 

But friends and enemies were soon to learn that 
though the effect of the massacre on the Huguenot 
party was great, it had done little to break their 
spirit, or even to diminish their power of resistance. 
Most of the powerful nobles to whom they had 
looked up as their leaders had been slaughtered, 
others had conformed to Romanism. After 1572 
the popular element predominated in- the Huguenot 
assemblies. The struggle which the Bourbons and 
the Chatillons had begun was continued by the 
citizens of La Rochelle and Montauban, of Sancerre 



96 Henry of Navarre. [1555- 



and Nimes. But the princes and nobles had only 
demanded religious liberty, the townsmen, not con- 
tent with asking for toleration, required also that 
the States-General should be assembled, the poHti- 
cal grievances of the country remedied. The repub- 
lican tendencies which seem to be the necessary 
consequence of Calvinism, began to make them- 
selves felt. . Numerous books and pamphlets poured 
from the press, publishing on the housetops, what 
hitherto men had scarcely whispered in a friend's 
ear, discussing the reciprocal rights of rulers and 
subjects, and affirming that if the King sought the 
hurt of his people, they were absolved from their 
allegiance. The obedience, so it was now taught, of 
the people is conditional on the Prince performing 
his engagement, whether implied or explicit, to gov- 
ern justly and equitably. No man is born a king, 
and it was proved historically that the French mon- 
archy was elective, and that sovereignty was not in 
the Crown, but in the people, represented by the 
Three Estates. This natural and lawful sovereignty 
of the nation, after lasting eleven centuries, had been 
extinguished by the gradual and unconstitutional 
encroachments of the kings. The inapplicability to 
the French monarchy of the Imperialist maxims 
borrowed by the lawyers from Roman law was 
pointed out. The only possible justification of des- 
potism is the maintenance of order ; the Massacre of 
St. Bartholomew had been an appeal to disorder, 
licence and anarchy. The Government had let loose 
upon society those destructive passions which it is 
its primary function to bridle. It was thus that the 



1576] Results of the Massacre, 97 

Protestant publicists forged the weapons afterwards 
used by the League in their struggle against Henry 
III. and Henry IV. 

The Protestant middle classes in uniting the cause 
of political liberty and progress with that of their 
religi'on showed a truer insight into the needs of 
their country than was ever attained to by the 
nobles of their party. It would have proved of in- 
estimable advantage to France had they been able 
to make their voice heard with more decisive effect. 
In the mouths of the demagogues of the League, of 
the hirelings of Spain and of the disciples of the 
Jesuits, such an appeal to the old constitutional 
liberties of France, and to the indefeasible sover- 
eignty of the people was a meaningless or hypo- 
critical jargon. 

Montauban, Sancerre and La Rochelle set the first 
example of resistance, refusing to receive the royal 
garrisons. Towards the end of 1572 a synod held 
in Beam drew up a plan for the organisation of the 
Protestant communities in districts, governed by 
officers elected by all classes. 

The Government determined to attack La Rochelle, 
in every respect the most important of the Huguenot 
strongholds, the port by which they communicated 
with their friends in the Low Countries and Eng- 
land, and which assisted the cause by contributing a 
considerable share of the wealth acquired by prey- 
ing on Spanish commerce. 

The siege of La Rochelle cost the lives of over 
20,000 men and of more than three hundred officers 
of some distinction. The King of Navarre and the 
7 



qS Henry of Navarre. L1655- 

Prince of Conde were compelled to prove the sin- 
cerity of their conversion by serving side by side 
with the Guises under the Duke of Anjou. But 
this Prince had meantime been elected King of 
Poland. The French agents had spared neither lies 
nor promises. Anjou, they declared, had taken no 
share in the persecution of the Protestants, which he 
had always lamented. It was not desirable that the 
Polish ambassadors, w^ho were on their way to salute 
their new sovereign, should find him engaged in the 
siege of a Protestant town. To appear to yield to a 
diplomatic necessity was less humiliating than to 
confess the total failure of all efforts to take La 
Rochelle by treachery or force ; and the Court 
gladly seized the opportunity to offer acceptable 
terms to the besieged (June 24, 1573). 

The lesson taught by the successful resistance of 
La Rochelle was not thrown away. On the anniver- 
sary of the massacre (August 24, 1573), the delegates 
of the Huguenots of Languedoc and Guienne met 
and after organising themselves into a kind of federal 
republic, sent a deputation to communicate their de- 
mands to the King : complete toleration and liberty 
of worship throughout the kingdom ; all law courts 
to contain an equal number of judges of both reli- 
gions ; members of the Reformed Church to be re- 
leased from the payment of tithes ; punishment of 
the authors of the massacre and restitution of the 
property of the victims to their heirs ; two fortresses 
in each province to be placed as security in the 
hands of the Protestants and garrisoned by them at 
the King's expense. Catherine exclaimed in indig- 



1576] Results of the Massacre. 99 

nant amazement, '' that if Conde had been ahve and 
in possession of Paris with 70,000 men he would not 
have asked half so much," yet she did not dare 
altogether to refuse to entertain the demands of the 
Reformers — so threatening had become the attitude 
of the moderate Catholic party, the Politicians. They 
were disgusted by the misgovernment of Charles IX., 
the perfidy and cruelty of his mother, the baseness 
of her Italian favourites. The sufferings of the 
Huguenots had excited the sympathy of many who 
did not care to abandon the Established Church, yet 
were not fanatically attached to its doctrines. A 
spirit of compromise and toleration was more widely 
diffused, weariness of the sufferings caused by a 
struggle in which the atrocities of the Catholics had 
been avenged by reprisals scarcely less cruel, indigna- 
tion that such horrors should be perpetrated in the 
name of religion, experience of the fact that it was 
possible for two religions to exist side by side in the 
same state and even in the same town, disposed all 
humane and moderate men to wish rather to join in 
seeking to remedy the anarchy and misgovernment 
under which the country was sinking, than to attempt 
to restore unity of faith by the sword. Moreover 
the Montmorencys, the leaders of the moderate 
party, were aware that the Queen-Mother intended 
their ruin after that of the Bourbons and Chatillons. 
The Politicians published a manifesto demanding 
the reformation of the Government, the assembly of 
the Estates, and the restoration of the national liber- 
ties. The Huguenots began to occupy the fortresses 
of Poitou* Montgomery, the splinter of whose lance 



loo Henry of Navarre, [1555- 

had killed Henry II., and who, to the disappoint- 
ment of Catherine, had escaped on St. Bartholomew's 
Day, landed in Normandy with English suppHes and 
English volunteers. 

The Duke of Damville, the second son of the Con- 
stable Montmorency,who was governor of Languedoc, 
where he ruled with almost sovereign authority, 
observed an attitude of friendly neutrality to the 
Huguenots of his province and of Guienne. 

In Poitou the Huguenots prospered, but in Nor- 
mandy Montgomery was unable to maintain himself 
and was finally compelled to capitulate. 

Catherine hurried to tell the King that Mont- 
gomery, whom she hated, was a prisoner ; but turn- 
ing his face to the wall he asked to be left in peace. 
Even Protestant historians are moved to pity by 
the miserable end of Charles IX. He had again com- 
pletely fallen under the influence of his mother. On 
one point only he had firmly insisted. He compelled 
his brother Anjou to leave France (September, 1573), 
to take possession of his Polish throne. Notwith- 
standing his weak health he exhausted himself in 
insane revels. He appeared to seek to lose himself 
in the wildest physical exertions. His eyes were 
sunk, his complexion livid, he was unable to meet 
the gaze of those with whom he spoke. In the 
autumn of 1573, lie was attacked by smallpox, his 
health became worse and worse, he often awoke 
bathed in his blood, a judgment as it seemed to him 
of the carnage to which he had consented. Indeed, 
from the first he was tormented by remorse. 

Less than a fortnight after the massacre,*so Henry 




CHARLES IX. 
From the painting by F, Clouet. 



1576] Results of the Massacre, loi 

IV. used to tell his friends, Charles IX. sent for him 
in the middle of the night ; the King had started 
from his bed alarmed by a confused noise of shouts, 
shrieks and groans, such as had re-echoed through 
the streets of Paris on that fatal night. Henry of 
Navarre himself and all who were present heard the 
turmoil, and officers were sent to discover what new 
riot had broken out in the city. The streets were 
empty, all was quiet in Paris, only round the Louvre 
the air was filled with horrid uproar. 

At other times the King was disturbed by black 
bands of obscene birds, crows and ravens, who ob- 
stinately perched on the towers and gables of the 
palace, and by their importunate cries appeared to 
call for such another banquet of murdered corpses. 

As his death approached, the King was constantly 
disturbed by fearful visions. He begged God to 
have mercy on him and on his people. What would 
become of them ? he cried ; as for himself, he well 
knew that he was lost. His last words were that he 
rejoiced to leave no son behind him, the heir of his 
kingdom and his crimes. 

Queen Catherine showed both spirit and skill in 
securing the peaceable succession of her favourite 
son. Fortunately for her the opponents she had 
most reason to dread were in her power. Montmor- 
ency and Cosse the leaders of the Politicians were 
in the Bastille ; Navarre and Alengon prisoners in 
all but name, watched, wrote the English envoy, by 
guard upon guard, and even the windows of their 
rooms grated. 

Conde alone had slipped from her clutches, and 



I02 Henry of Navarre, [1555- 

after visiting Geneva, was negotiating with the 
German Princes and collecting mercenaries at Stras- 
bourg. The news of his brother's death reached 
Anjou in Poland, where he had already disgusted 
his subjects by his womanish ways, his evident dis- 
taste for their country and customs and his neglect 
of his public duties. He fled from Cracow with in- 
decent haste in the middle of the night, excusing 
himself on the ground that the state of France was 
so disturbed that a week's delay might imperil his 
succession. Yet instead of taking the shortest road 
to the French frontier, he preferred to travel by 
Vienna and through Italy, and wasted two months 
in luxurious debauchery. Pignerol, the gate of Italy, 
was restored to the Duke of Savoy, in acknowledg- 
ment of his sumptuous hospitality. The Duke at 
least repaid Henry's generosity by good advice, such 
as he had already received from the Emperor Maxi- 
milian and the Venetian Doge. He urged him to 
conciliate the Politicians, and to re-establish peace 
by moderate concessions to the Protestants. He 
invited Damville to Turin to confer with the King. 
Damville came and the King tried to persuade his 
host to allow him to be arrested. Damville was 
warned to be on his guard, and hastily returning to 
Languedoc at once formed a closer alliance with the 
Huguenots. 

He was elected protector of the confederates, but 
was to act by the advice of a council composed of 
three representatives of each of the districts which 
adhered to the cause of the Protestants and the 
allied Catholics. Of these deputies, one was to be a 



1576] Results of the Massacre, 103 

noble and two of the Third Estate ; the majority was 
thus assured to tlie representatives of the commons, 
a decisive proof that the movement was not, as has 
been often alleged, aristocratic. Yet it must be 
allowed that the Protestants from henceforth became 
less and less a national party. In the manifesto 
which they now published we find for the last time 
demands for toleration coupled with a clear state- 
ment of the reforms necessary for the constitutional 
development of the monarchy — regular meetings of 
the States-General, abolition of arbitrary taxation 
and other securities for pubhc liberty. 

Persecution and war had driven the Protestants 
out of the provinces in which they formed only a 
small minority of the population ; they stood at bay 
in Dauphiny, Languedoc, Guienne, Poitou, Auvergne 
and the lordships under the Pyrenees, districts in 
which the traditions of provincial independence were 
most powerful, the sense of national unity weakest. 
Hence the danger that the great nobles, the heads 
of families, who had long enjoyed a consideration 
and authority in their respective provinces scarcely 
inferior to that of the Crown, such as the La Tour 
d'Auvergnes in Auvergne, the La Rochefoucaulds in 
Guienne, the La Tremoilles and Rohans in Poitou, 
might use the strength of the party for the gratifica- 
tion of their private ambition. But it cannot be too 
often repeated that the Catholic party, the party of 
the League, was not in any true sense a more popu- 
lar party, more patriotic, or more concerned for the 
maintenance of the national liberties and unity than 
their opponents. One of the main objects of the 



I04 Henry of Navarre. [1555- 

Catholic leaders was to convert the governorships of 
provinces and towns into hereditary offices ; yet it 
was not forgotten that a similar conversion of the 
counties and duchies of the Carlovingian kingdoms, 
from offices held during the good-will of the sovereign 
into hereditary principalities, had produced the dis- 
ruption of those kingdoms and the feudal anarchy of 
the loth and nth centuries. The numerous towns 
which joined the League aimed only at recovering 
the selfish municipal privileges of the Middle Ages. 
To secure the independence enjoyed by the free 
towns of Germany, they would have acquiesced in 
the partition of the monarchy. 

Catherine de' Medici was waiting to welcome her 
son at Bourgoin and they entered Lyons in state 
together. There the new King proclaimed his inten- 
tion of subduing by force of arms those who resisted 
his authority. Refusing to Hsten to those wiser 
councillors who pointed to the exhaustion of the 
country and the emptiness of the treasury, he fol- 
lowed the advice of his mother, who, fearing, if peace 
were made, the influence of Montmorency and other 
Moderates, and believing that nothing was impossible 
to the hero of Jarnac and Montcontour when directed 
by her councils, had abandoned her habitual caution 
and was the advocate of a vigorous policy. 

But when the money needed to pay the expenses 
of military operations had been raised by loans from 
foreign princes, by extortion and by ruinous ex- 
pedients, it was wasted in senseless profusion by the 
King, who showed his Catholic zeal not by placing 
himself at the head of his army, but by conducting 



1576] Results of the Massacre, 105 

fantastically dressed processions of penitents. These 
processions had one good consequence. Cardinal 
Charles of Lorraine unaccustomed to such barefoot 
devotions, caught a chill which proved fatal. The 
Protestants believed that he was carried off by the 
devil ; for '' something more violent than the wind 
tore down and whirled off into the air the lattices and 
window bars of the house where he lodged." 

While Henry III. was parading his puerile piety in 
the papal city of Avignon, Damville held twenty 
miles away, at Nimes, a general assembly of the 
Huguenots and '' united Catholics." Discredited and 
ridiculed, the King journeyed north to be crowned at 
Rheims and the confederates were encouraged to 
propose terms which implied not the humiliation 
only but the ruin of the monarchy. Efforts were 
made to continue the war with greater vigour, when 
the Court was suddenly alarmed by the news of the 
flight of the Duke of Alengon, who placed himself at 
the head of the rebels (September, 1575). 

Henry of Bourbon both disliked and despised 
Alengon and chafed to see him occupying, as the 
champion and leader of the Reformers, a position to 
which he felt that he himself had a better claim. 
Soon after the Duke's flight, Cecil's agent reports that 
" Navarre was never so merry nor so much made of " 
— but as time went on, his position at the French Court 
became neither more secure nor more honourable. 

It was humiliating to masquerade in Henry III.'s 
penitential processions and still more degrading to be 
the companion of debaucheries, which in themselves 
were not attractive to an appetite for vice, which if 



io6 Henry of Navarre. [1555- 

scarcely less keen than the King's, was less sophisti- 
cated and jaded. And what if not even the sacrifice 
of his self-respect, his dignity and his ambition could 
secure his safety ? 

All his Huguenot servants had been removed, ex- 
cept Aubigne, the historian, who, like his master, 
had hidden a serious purpose under a frivolous ex- 
terior, and one other : these two sitting by his bed, 
heard him sigh and repeat the 88th psalm, '' Thou 
hast put away my acquaintance far from me and 
made me to be abhorred of them. I am so fast in 
prison that I cannot get forth." Upon this, Aubigne 
drew the curtains and addressed to his master one of 
those sententious speeches with which, if we may 
believe his history, he would seem to have been 
always provided. " Is it true. Sire, that the spirit 
of God still dwells and works in you ? You sigh to 
Him for the absence of your faithful friends and ser- 
vants, while they are met together grieving that you 
are not with them, and labouring for your deliver- 
ance. Are you not weary of trying to hide behind 
yourself ? you are guilty of your greatness and of the 
wrongs you have endured. The murderers of St. 
Bartholomew's Day have a good memory, and cannot 
believe that of their victims to be so short. 

" Nay, if what is dishonourable were but safe ! But 
no risk can be greater than to remain. As for us 
two, we were speaking, when what you said led us to 
draw the curtain, of escaping to-morrow. Consider, 
Sire, that you will next be served by hands which 
will not dare to refuse to employ poison or steel 
against you." 



1576] Results of the Massacre. 107 

It is probable that no eloquence was needed to 
induce Henry to attempt his escape as soon as occa- 
sion offered. In the meantime he feigned to believe 
the King's protestations of good-will and to fear the 
hostility of Alengon, while he continued his appar- 
ently careless and trivial life. In a letter to the 
Governor of Beam, which he no doubt expected 
would be read by others, he describes the Court 
as being strangely distracted, '' we are all ready to cut 
one another's throats, and wear daggers, chain vests 
and often corselets under our cloaks . . . the King 
loves me more than ever. M. de Guise and M. 
de Mayenne [Guise's younger brother] never leave 
my side"; the partisans of Alengon, he goes on to 
say, hate him to the death, but in a Court where all 
others are his friends, he does not fear them. 

He played the dupe so successfully, Henry III. 
was so convinced of his infatuation, that greater liberty 
began to be allowed him. Toward the end of Jan- 
uary (1576), some ofificers who bad been disappointed 
in their expectation of royal favour offered, if the 
King of Navarre would separate himself from the 
Court, to put him in possession of Chartres, le Mans 
and Cherbourg. In order that they might have time 
for their preparations, and to enable his friends to 
collect a force near Paris, Henry postponed his 
attempt to escape till February 20th. 

On February 4th as he came back towards night- 
fall from hunting near Senlis, he met Aubigne and 
two or three of his attendants galloping at full 
speed from Paris. ''Sire," cried Aubigne, "we are 
betrayed ; the King knows all. The road to Paris 



io8 Henry of Navarre. [1555- 

leads to dishonour and death, those to Hfe and glory 
are in the opposite direction." '' There is no need," 
was the answer, *' of so many words ; let us be off." 
All night long they hurried through the dark and 
frozen woods, crossed the Seine as the day broke, at 
Poissy, and without meeting any of the numerous 
bodies of troops by whom the country was patrolled, 
reached Alengon in safety the next day. Here 
Henry stood sponsor at the christening, according 
to Calvinist ritual, of the child of his doctor. As he 
entered the meeting-house, the congregation were 
singing the 2 1st psalm. " The King shall rejoice in 
thy strength, O Lord, exceeding glad shall he be of 
thy salvation. Thou hast given him his heart's 
desire." 

Hearing that the psalm had not been specially 
chosen, he said that he welcomed the omen. 

During his long ride he had been thoughtful and 
silent beyond his wont. He now began to talk to 
those about him with his usual cheery vivacity 
and apparently careless good-fellowship. He had, 
he said, left in Paris only two things which he 
regretted — the Mass and his wife. The latter he 
would have again ; the former he might make shift 
to do without. 

From Alengon Henry proceeded to Saumuronthe 
Loire, where he was joined by some of the numerous 
Huguenot gentry of the neighbourhood. Yet his 
position was difficult. Not only was Alengon recog- 
nised as the leader of the opponents of the Court, 
but Conde had been acting as the chief of the Prot- 
estants, and it was doubtful whether his greater 



1576] The Peace of Monsieur. 109 

services and more earnest devotion to the cause 
would not be held to outweigh the superior rank of 
the King of Navarre. The wisest course probably 
was to take no decided action, and to await the 
result of the negotiations which were being carried 
on between the Government and the rebels. This 
Henry determined to do, and in the meantime urged 
his friends to join him and thus strengthen his posi- 
tion whether for peace or war. 

Catherine and her son in their terror at the 
alliance between Protestants and Politicians, and at a 
threatened invasion of German mercenaries due to 
the negotiations of Conde, released the Marshals 
Montmorency and Cosse. Montmorency bestirred 
himself to bring about an agreement which should 
end the war. Whole districts were being reduced 
to desolation. Both sides plundered the unhappy 
peasantry with impartial cruelty. But the German 
Reiters excelled in systematic rapacity and the 
atrocities perpetrated by their aUies increased the 
popular hatred of the Huguenots in the North- 
eastern provinces. 

The Court proposed terms which were generally 
acceptable {Paix de Monsieur^ February, 1576). The 
conditions granted to the Protestants were more 
favourable than any they had hitherto obtained : 
complete freedom of worship throughout the king- 
dom except at Paris ; the estabhshment of courts in 
all the Parhaments composed of an equal number of 
judges of both religions ; the restoration of the 
Protestants and their allies, who were declared to be 
the good and loyal subjects of the King, to all their 



no Henry of Navarre. [1575 

honours and offices ; the disavowal of the Massacre 
of St. Bartholomew and the restitution of the prop- 
erty of the victims to their heirs ; and the occupation 
of eight fortresses as a security for the due ob- 
servance of the treaty. In order that other griev- 
ances might be remedied, the States-General were 
to be assembled within six months. Such were the 
more general stipulations. Alengon further obtained 
the addition to his appanage of the duchies of 
Anjou, Touraine and Berry and of other lordships 
which raised his revenue to 400,000 crowns. Cond^ 
was confirmed in the government of Picardy. 
Navarre in that of Guienne. A large sum was paid 
to John Casimir, the brother of the Elector Palatine 
for the wages of his Reiters and. to compensate him 
for the trouble and expense of his invasion of France. 



i 


^ 




M 


& 



CHAPTER III. 

HENRY OF NAVARRE THE PROTECTOR OF THE 
CHURCHES. 

1 576-1 586. 




IHE terms of the "Peace of Monsieur ". 
were far too favourable to the Prot- 
estants not to excite the greatest 
irritation among the more zealous 
Catholics. 

^ ^,,.„^„„ Henry III. had been determined to 

end the war, even, he said, should it cost him half 
his kingdom. He probably counted on the violent 
reaction which was certain to be provoked, and on 
the resistance which the Parliaments and clergy and 
other bodies would offer to the execution of the 
treaty, as an excuse for the non-performance of the 
concessions by which he bought peace. But if so, 
he ought to have seen how much his authority 
would be weakened by the double humiliation of 
yielding such terms to rebellious subjects and of 
subsequently excusing their violation by the plea 
that he was powerless to enforce them. 

Ill 



1 1 2 Henry of Navarre. [1576- 

Humieres, the Governor of Peronne, refused to 
surrender that strong fortress to Conde, who, accord- 
ing to the terms of the peace, ought to have been 
placed in possession of it as Governor of Picardy, 
and sought for support by forming an association 
between the partisans of the Guises and the most 
fanatical Catholics in the province. The Catholics 
as well as the Protestants had proved in the South 
the value of such confederations for political and 
military purposes. 

The movement spread, and, although the better 
class of citizens and magistrates held aloof, was re- 
ceived with special favour in Paris, and soon grew 
into a general Holy League^ or association of the ex- 
treme Catholic party throughout the kingdom. 

A paper setting forth the objects of the associa- 
tion and the obligations which its members assumed 
was widely circulated. The preamble declared, that 
the Holy League of the Catholic princes, lords and 
gentlemen — it is significant that there is no mention 
of towns or burgesses^^was formed to re-establish 
the authority of the law of God and of the Apos- 
tolic Roman Church ; to restore to the provinces and 
estates of the kingdom their privileges and fran- 
chises, as they had existed in the time of King 
Clovis ; to support the honour of the King and to 
obey him and after him all the posterity of the 
House of Valois, thus impHcitly excluding the 
Bourbon Princes from the succession. The members 
bound themselves to obey loyally the head of the 
association, to punish with the utmost severity who- 
soever under any pretext whatever attempted to 



1586] The Protector of the Churches. 1 1 3 

withdraw himself from the League, and to regard as 
enemies all who refused to join it, to defend each 
other against any assailant, whoever he might be — 
2. ^., even against the King — and to endeavour to 
compass the objects of the association against no 
matter what opposition. 

The same articles of association were probably not 
shown to all members, and those which were most 
threatening to his authority were certainly concealed 
from the King. Yet they could not long be kept 
secret. From the first the League was regarded with 
suspicion by all loyal Frenchmen, and Henry IIL 
endeavoured to obtain a promise from the Guises, 
that they would form no associations which were 
likely to lead to a breach of the recent peace. 

But the reaction of popular feehng against the 
Protestants was violent. They were attacked and 
their worship disturbed by the populace ; if they 
appealed to the protection of the laws, they ob- 
tained no redress, and the obstinate ill-will of the 
Parliaments prevented the estabhshment of the 
mixed courts. 

The King hoped by his statecraft and their mutual 
rivalry to depress his opponents, whether Guises, 
Bourbons or Montmorencys, and gradually to eradi- 
cate heresy without having recourse to arms, and with- 
out subordinating French interests to those of Spain. 
But to carry out such a plan required patient self- 
control as well as extreme skill in perceiving and 
utilising the force of opposing tendencies. 

Henry HL studied his Commines and Machiavelli, 
spun fine webs of policy and intrigue in his cabinet, 



114 Henry of Navarre. [1576- 

but either failed to carry them out, or carried them 
out in such a manner that they only damaged his 
position. 

For instance, the idea of counterbalancing the 
power of the great nobles by raising to an equality 
with them, men who should owe their fortune to his 
favour was not impolitic. But Henry chose such 
minions as Villequier, and the son-in-law of this 
wife-murderer, the not less infamous D'O, recom- 
mended only by a common taste for debauch- 
ery. His great favourites, Epernon and Joyeuse 
were indeed men of a different stamp ; the former 
especially did him good service. But that service 
was more than counterbalanced by the discredit 
and the reputation for weakness which the King 
incurred by his foolish fondness and profusion. 
Almost everything depended on the personal im- 
pression made by the King and on the practice of a 
wise economy. But Henry HI. threw money away 
with both hands, wasting it in frivolous, indecent, 
but most costly feasts, squandering it on the minis- 
ters of his pleasures, buying curiosities and precious 
stones at absurd prices. 

He was in many ways very jealous of his royal 
dignity, and endeavoured to introduce into his Court 
the stately ceremonial of Spanish etiquette. But 
since this to some extent restricted the crowded 
publicity in which the French kings had been accus- 
tomed to pass their lives, the innovations he made 
were generally unpopular ; and the worst interpreta- 
tion was put upon the King's supposed desire to 
avoid the observation of his subjects. To a modern 



1686] "I^fie Protector of the Churches. 1 1 5 

reader the regulations which he pubHshed do not 
seem to indicate any morbid craving for soHtude. 
The cup of beef-tea, on which the King broke his 
fkst before leaving his bedroom, was to be borne in 
procession by the chief physician, accompanied by 
two chamberlains, one carrying bread, the other 
water, and by the cup-bearer, followed by the Car- 
dinals and Princes, the great officers of state and the 
members of the council attending the levee. 

On Mondays the King would hunt, on Wednes- 
days ride his managed horses, on Thursdays and 
Sundays play tennis or pall-mall in public. All day 
long he was followed about by a crowd of courtiers ; 
at dinner a balustrade gave him the privacy of a 
beast in a menagerie. At night when he retired 
into his room, he found his '' singing men discours- 
ing music," and only after his boots were taken ofT, 
he went into his cabinet, into which none might fol- 
low but Epernon or Joyeuse bearing his bed candle. 

But no elaboration of ceremonial could make his 
subjects respect the person or policy of a King, who 
— to mention his follies rather than his vices — 
dressed more like a woman than a man, who kept 
his council waiting for hours while he dressed his 
wife's hair or starched her ruffs, who at a serious 
crisis of his affairs found time to drive round Paris 
and steal the ladies' lapdogs ; who gave solemn 
audience to ambassadors with a basketful of puppies 
slung from his neck by a broad silk ribbon ; who left 
the reports of his ministers unread, while he re- 
freshed his memory of the Latin Grammar ; who 
introduced the fashion of playing Cup and Ball in 



1 1 6 Hen^y of Navarre. [1576- 

season and out ; and whose devotions were hardly 
more serious or more decent than his debaucheries. 

He was soon so despised, that the dignity, the 
grace and the fascination which were his when he 
chose to assume them, lost all power. But indeed 
at the best his dignity was too much that of an actor 
on the stage, a hasty word or an aside would often 
betray that it was only assumed for the occasion; 
his grace and fascination were those of a fawning, 
cat-Hke beast, whose treacherous claws may at any 
moment be darted into the flesh which it caresses. 

The States-General had been summoned to meet 
at Blois in December (1576). The League exerted 
itself to the utmost to terrorise the elections, and it 
was assisted by the whole influence of the govern- 
ment. The Protestants and the Politicians, discon- 
tented at the non-fulfilment of the terms of the 
peace, and seeing that the CathoHc associations and 
the Crown nowhere allowed even a semblance of 
freedom to the elections, held wholly aloof ; no 
deputies of any of the Three Estates came from the 
districts and towns which were in their power. 

They expected that measures would be passed 
fatal to their interests, and wished to leave no pre- 
tence for describing the States-General of Blois as a 
free and full meeting of the representatives of the 
nation. Yet in so acting the Huguenots and their 
alHes made a grave mistake, since, notwithstanding 
their abstention and the terrorism of the League, 
only a bare majority of the Third Estate voted in 
favour of restoring the unity of the faith by force ; 
and that vote was rendered nugatory by the refusal 



1586] The Protector of the Churches. 1 1 7 

of the supplies without which war could not be suc- 
cessfully waged. 

As the proceedings went on, the members of the 
lay Estates showed more and more aversion to the 
League, and one of their number published a pam- 
phlet in which he accused the Guises and other leaders 
of the association of seeking only how they might 
establish themselves as independent princes in their 
respective provinces. 

After obtaining all he wished by the treaty of 
1576, Alengon had been at little pains to conceal his 
dislike of his Protestant allies. He told his intimates 
that to know the heretics was to hate them, that 
La Noue was the only honest man in the whole set. 
It was therefore easy for the friends of the King of 
Navarre to establish his superior claim to be recog- 
nised as the Protector of the Reformed Churches. 

But although he had been publicly re-admitted 
into the Calvinist communion (at Thouars or Niort, 
in June, 1576), Henry did not without difficulty ob- 
tain admission into the walls of La Rochelle. The 
citizens could not forget that he had fought in the 
ranks of their assailants and that even now there 
were among his followers many who had taken an 
active part in the massacre of St. Bartholomew's 
Day. At length he was allowed to enter the Prot- 
estant stronghold accompanied only by his sister 
and a few Huguenot attendants, and when with tears 
and ready emotion he deplored his enforced apostasy 
before the assembled congregation, there seemed to 
be no further reason to question the sincerity of his 
religious convictions. 



Ii8 Henry of Navarre. wbl^- 

From La Rochelle Henry journeyed through 
Guienne to his hereditary dominions in the South. 
The news which he received from Court made it clear 
that the treaty so recently concluded was not even 
to be a truce. La Noue, he wrote to Damville, had 
been with him and had given him good and faithful 
advice. It was the intention of their common enemies 
to destroy them ; an intention only to be prevented 
by their union. 

.While preparing for the impending storm, Henry 
received at Agen (February, 1577) a deputation sent 
by the estates of Blois, to express their regret that 
he had not seen good to attend their session, and 
their hope that he would assist their endeavours to 
restore unity and peace to France. He was moved 
to tears by the eloquence with which their spokes- 
man, the Archbishop of Vienne, dwelt on the ca- 
lamities which resistance to the King's commands 
would entail on the country ; but replied, that the 
evil advisers who persuaded his Majesty to break the 
peace would be responsible for those sufferings. 
They had urged him to embrace the true Catholic 
faith ; as to that, his constant prayer to God was, 
that if, as he believed, he held the true faith, he 
might be confirmed in it, but if not, that He might 
be pleased to enlighten him, and give him will and 
power to drive all error not only from his own heart, 
but also from his kingdom, and if possible from the 
world ; — a declaration which showed no very stub- 
born dogmatism, and not out of keeping with a 
profession of faith made a few days earlier in a letter 
to a Catholic friend. '' Those who honestly follow 



1586J The Protector of the Churches. 119 

their conscience are of my religion, and mine is that 
of all brave and good men." Sentiments, laudable 
in themselves ; yet such professed latitudinarianism 
was unpalatable to the Calvinists, even before it 
could be interpreted by the light of later events. 
Yet, though on this as on other occasions Henry did 
not forget to treat his enemies as if they might some 
day be his friends, he was active in preparing for the 
hostilities which ensued, and in carrying them on 
when once begun. The m-an, he said, who after he 
has put on his breastplate still loves his ease, had 
better not meddle with war. 

He had now for the first time an opportunity of 
showir^g how far he possessed the qualities of a gen- 
eral and a statesman ; that he was brave and clement 
he had already given some proof. Entering the 
small town of Eausse in his county of Armagnac, he 
had been suddenly attacked with cries of '' Aim at 
the white plume," by two hundred or more fanatics, 
who by dropping the portcullis behind him separated 
him from his guards. Accompanied by only four 
gentlemen, the King charged his assailants with such 
vigour that he was able to reach the porch of a house, 
where with his companions he kept his enemies at 
bay till his followers had scaled the walls. When 
master of the town, he forbade all reprisals, and only 
allowed the punishment of two or three of the ring- 
leaders. 

Among the four who fought at Eausse by the side 
of Henry of Bourbon, were two young men whose 
names and renown are closely connected with that 
of their master : Philip de Mornay, Lord of Le 



1 20 Henry of Navarre, [1576- 

Plessis-Marly, and Maximilian dc B^thune, Baron of 
Rosny. 

Philip de Mornay was born in 1549. Destined by 
his CathoHc father for the Church, he matriculated, 
when eight years old, at the College of Lisieux in the 
University of Paris. Two years later his father died, 
and his education devolved on his mother, a Cal- 
vinist. Her care and circumstances combined to 
give him the training best suited to fit him for the 
part he was destined to play. He visited Geneva, 
he studied at Heidelberg and Padua, he travelled in 
Germany and Italy and the Low Countries. He 
was equally versed in books and in the manners and 
cities of men, in the accomphshments of a scholar, 
and of a soldier and statesman. 

In his twenty-third year he submitted to Coligny 
a memorandum on the state of the Low Countries, 
which determined the Admiral to send him as con- 
fidential envoy to the Prince of Orange. The massacre 
prevented this mission with the other plans of the 
Protestant leader. 

Mornay escaped immediate death by the humanity 
of his Catholic host. Disdaining the proffered pro- 
tection of the Guises, he made his way by prudence 
and good luck to the coast and crossed over into 
England, where the warm recommendations of Wal- 
singham obtained for him a favourable reception at 
Court and the confidence of the Queen's advisers. 
Recalled to France by La None, Mornay had taken 
part in the negotiations between Cond^, Alengon 
and the Germans, and in the following campaign. 
In the midst of the bustle of diplomacy and war he 



1586] The Protector of the Churches. 121 

found time to woo and wed Charlotte Arbaleste, a 
young Protestant widow, well fitted by her talents 
and character to be the worthy partner of his life 
and thoughts. 

After the conclusion of the Peace of Monsieur, 
Mornay joined the King of Navarre, and was at once 
admitted into his council, where his intimate ac- 
quaintance with foreign courts and countries was of 
the greatest service. A manifesto, in which Henry 
justified his conduct, his attitude to the Estates, and 
his warlike preparations was the first of that admi- 
rable series of state papers written by Mornay, 
remarkable alike for their lucidity, dignity and 
moderation, which did much to raise the reputation 
of the King of Navarre in Europe as well as in France. 

At Eausse he proved that he was as ready with 
his sword as with his pen, and although his exploits 
as a soldier were obscured by his renown as a states- 
man, the King had little reason to boast in his off- 
hand way, when on a later occasion Mornay had 
done some notable service, '' that he knew in case of 
need how to turn even an inkhorn into a captain." 
Not men only of the moderate party, such as I'Estoile 
and De Thou, but Leaguers who continued French- 
men, like Jeannin and Villeroy, sought the friend- 
ship of Du Plessis-Mornay, and the verdict of his 
contemporaries has been confirmed by posterity. 
" Even in the caricature of the Henriade, where the 
figures of the wars of religion are set up in gilt 
gingerbread in the taste of the Grand Siecle, the noble 
lineaments of the Calvinist gentleman stand out as 
if incapable of disfigurement." " If," says a clear- 



122 Henry of Navarre. [1576- 

sighted though fanciful French historian, '' if virtue 
had a home on earth, it was in the heart of Mor- 
nay." 

Very different was the character and the am- 
biguous reputation of Maximihan de Bethune, 
Baron of Rosny, better known to posterity as Duke 
of Sully. Like Du Plessis-Mornay, he had narrowly 
escaped the massacre of 1572, partly by good-for- 
tune, partly by a presence of mind remarkable in a boy 
barely thirteen years old. A student at the College 
of Burgundy he had, warned of his danger by the 
master of the house in which he lodged, put on his 
academical dress, and breviary in hand passed unmo- 
lested through the scene of bloodshed till he found 
shelter in the house of the rector of his college. 

As soon as it was safe to do so he sought out and 
attached himself by his father's orders to the King 
of Navarre and followed his fortunes when he 
escaped from Paris. 

The number of portraits extant often only in- 
creases the difficulty of forming a consistent con- 
ception of the features of the dead, and the fact that 
the character of Rosny has been sketched from the 
most various points of view, does not enable us to 
pronounce judgment with greater confidence on the 
minister of Henry IV. 

He was disliked by the Catholics as a Protestant, 
who nevertheless reached the highest position in the 
state ; the Huguenots suspected the sincerity of a 
believer who constantly preferred the interests of 
the monarchy to those of his sect, who approved or 
even urged his master's perversion, who was the 



1586] The Protector of the Churches. 123 

rival of Du Plessis-Mornay, the friend of Du Perron, 
the ex-Huguenot, court divine and sophist. 

The whole tribe of courtiers, place-hunters and 
publicans hated the man who was so austere a guar- 
dian of the public purse, and who, while ruthlessly 
reforming the abuses and peculations by which they 
trusted to become rich, himself amassed a colossal 
fortune. The lawyers could not pardon the disre- 
gard which Sully showed more than once for the 
authority and the pretensions of the Parliaments. 
Just or unjust, the King's will, he said, was law. 
Men of letters were estranged by the economy 
which checked the not too generous flow of the 
King's bounty. All ahke were offended by rude and 
overbearing manners. Not only was Sully obstinate 
in saying no, but he never cared to take the edge 
off a rebuff by any softness or flattery in word or 
manner. 

Though honest, Rosny was not disinterested ; un- 
like Du Plessis-Mornay, who '' put no farthing in his 
purse and acquired no inch of land," he grew rich 
in the service of his master. Even the war, to carry 
on which many Protestant nobles mortgaged their es- 
tates and cut down their timber, was to him a source 
of profit. In the escalade of La Reole, one of his 
earliest exploits, he gained booty worth 1,000 crowns ; 
from the sack of Cahors he carried off a strone-box 
containing four times as much ; when the royaHsts 
stormed the Faubourg St. Germain, he laid his 
hands on some 3,000 crowns ; during the siege of 
Louviers, on as many more. As if guided by some 
unerring instinct, he found his way to treasure with- 



124 Henry of Navarre, [1576- 

out the help of any divining rod. It has been re- 
marked, and with truth, that though an excellent 
man of business. Sully was no financial genius. He 
looked upon the King's far-seeing attempts to en- 
courage arts and manufactures, much as an old 
fashioned and parsimonious bailiff would regard his 
master's costly experiments in scientific farming. 
But the evils which he was called upon to remedy 
were gross and patent. To deal with them in his 
common-sense fashion, needed only plain honesty, 
unwearying industry, power of comprehending 
minute and intricate details, combined with great 
capacity for organisation and a most determined 
and relentless persistence. These qualities may not 
amount to genius ; but their combination in such 
perfection is rarer than any genius ; and the man 
who possessed them was invaluable to a prince called 
upon to rule a country perishing, not because it 
needed a revolution or the reconstruction of its in- 
stitutions, but because those which it possessed were 
threatening ruin from neglect, or so choked and en- 
cumbered by abuses that they no longer performed 
any useful functions. Nor are other reasons want- 
ing which account for the favour shown to Sully by 
Henry IV. He was his faithful and constant com- 
panion in arms. At Coutras, Arques, Ivry, Aumale, 
Rouen, Amiens, in a hundred nameless skirmishes 
he fought, " as headlong," said the King, " as a cock- 
chafer," with a fiery valour surprising in a man of 
cold and calculating character. Sully moreover 
combined a courtier's pliability with great outward 
frankness, and even roughness of bearing in council, 



1586] The Protectoi^ of the Churches. 125 

for Henry, who justly prided himself on the patience 
with which he accepted rebuke, and listened to un- 
palatable advice, was often flattered rather than irri- 
tated by contradiction. He did not refuse services 
which the more austere integrity of Du Plessis-Mor- 
nay declined. When, for instance, Henry desired 
to obtain possession of a promise of marriage ex- 
changed between his hardly used sister Catherine 
and her cousin the Count of Soissons, Rosny spared 
no artifice or lie till he had deceived the lovers into 
entrusting the precious document to his keeping. 
While, therefore. Sully, an exile from power, found 
solace and dignity in the vast fortune of which the 
foundation had been laid by horse-coping at the 
Court of Pau, what other reward could virtue such 
as Mornay's expect than to be praised and starve ? 

During the first part of the 17th century, Sully's 
reputation was depressed by his personal unpopu- 
larity ; during the second half it was, like that of his 
master, obscured by the rising sun of Lewis XIV. 
But the eclipse and darkness in which that sun set, 
led men to reflect on the different course of events 
during the reign of his grandfather, when each year 
saw some increase in the security, strength and pros- 
perity of the country. Moreover, the exaggerated 
mercantilism o: Colbert provoked a violent reaction, 
and those economists who held the land to be the 
true source of wealth, extolled the wisdom of the 
minister who had proclaimed pastoral and arable 
farming to be the breasts from which the whole sus- 
tenance of the country must be drawn. Unlikely 
as it may appear to the reader of that amazing and 



126 Henry of Navarre. [1576- 

mendacious compilation of pompous egotism, Sul- 
ly's Memoirs have also exaggerated his posthumous 
fame ; historians have largely used them as a valu- 
able contemporary authority, and have in many 
cases, half unconsciously, adopted the view of his 
actions, the estimate of his importance, which he 
wished to prevail. 

The Estates, though ready to vote resolutions 
urging the restoration of the unity of the faith, ab- 
solutely refused to sanction any further alienation 
of the Crown lands, or any other way of raising the re- 
sources necessary for a vigorous campaign. They were 
therefore dismissed by the King, who loudly expressed 
his disappointment, but probably was well pleased 
at the proved weakness of the party of the League. 
Meantime hostilities had begun and were carried on 
in a desultory fashion, though with some vigour and 
much ferocity, to the disadvantage on the whole, of 
the Huguenots, who were weakened by the defection 
of Damville, now by his brother's death Duke of 
Montmorency and head of his house. But his 
example was not generally followed by the Catho- 
lics of his party, nor even by his own family. His 
brother Thore and his cousin Chatillon, the son of 
Coligny, were on the point of attacking him under 
the walls of Montpellier when news came that peace 
had again been concluded. 

The King of Navarre, who was not on good terms 
with his cousin Conde, and whose little Court was 
distracted by the enmities between his Protestant 
and Catholic followers, listened readily to the pro_ 
posals of the King and Queen-Mother for a general 
pacification. 



1586] The Proleclo^" of the Churches. 127 

The Peace of Bergerac (September 17, 1577) was 
based on a fair compromise. Protestant worship was 
allowed in the towns then held by the confederates, 
and in one town in each bailliage and to the nobles 
in their houses. The Protestants were to be fairly 
represented in the law courts. Eight cautionary 
fortresses garrisoned at the King's expense were 
to be left in their hands for six years. All leagues 
and secret associations were forbidden. This set- 
tlement was gladly received by moderate men of 
both parties ; it was honestly meant by the King, 
and might have been lasting, but for the turbulent 
ambition of the House of Lorraine, the intrigues of 
Philip II. and the influence of events in other parts 
of Europe. 

If he could not compel the Protestants to con- 
form, Henry HI. wished to keep on good terms with 
them ; since he and they had the same enemies, 
Spain and the Guises. The subsequent infractions 
of the edict of which the Huguenots loudly and 
justly complained, were due, not so much to the bad 
faith of the King, as to the disobedience of govern- 
ors who, like Montmorency in Languedoc, or Guise 
in Burgundy, acted as if independent sovereigns, 
and to the fanaticism of the populace encouraged 
by the stubborn ill-will of the law courts. When 
their own leader succeeded to the throne, the Prot- 
estants found that their position was not bettered, 
and looked back to the years which followed the 
Peace of Bergerac as to the time when on the whole 
their condition had been most tolerable '' for good 
but ill, for ill yet passing good." 



128 Henry of Navarre. [1576- 

The King of Navarre as Protector of the Reformed 
Churches was zealous in calling the attention of the 
Government to their grievances ; and not less im- 
portunate in demanding the payment of his wife's 
dower, and in protesting against the sequestration 
of the revenues of his wide domains in the north 
and centre of France. 

To satisfy his claims and to settle the points still 
in dispute, Catherine de' Medici accompanied her 
daughter to the Court of Navarre, rejoicing in an 
opportunity of diplomatic intrigue and trickery. 
Margaret of Valois was not sorry to rejoin her hus- 
band; she hated her brother Henry III., and had 
chosen her lovers from among the favourites of the 
Duke of Anjou, between whom and the King's 
minions insults, broils and duels were of constant 
occurrence. 

With the two Queens came a bevy of ladies, 
among them Madame de Sauves, a woman who had 
given Henry of Bourbon some early lessons in prof- 
ligacy. It was not without reason, that when writ- 
ing to ask the Huguenots to send representatives to 
assist him at the approaching conferences he also 
bade them " pray God to fortify him with sobriety 
and prudence, in order that he might withstand the 
wiles and artifices of those who are plotting the ruin 
of the churches." 

Catherine remained eighteen months with her 
daughter and son-in-law. He fell in love with one 
of her girls, Cond6 with another, the Viscount of 
Turenne, the most powerful of the Protestant nobles, 
devoted himself to the Queen of Navarre. This was 



1586] The Protector of the Churches. 129 

what the Queen-Mother had hoped, her main object 
being to sow dissension between the King of Na- 
varre, the Prince and Turenne, and to prevent any 
close understanding between Margaret and her hus- 
band. The Florentine was so far successful that 
Henry and his young courtiers yielded at once to 
the allurements of her '' flying squadron." Even an 
old and sober Calvinist captain, a pillar of the Church, 
was seduced by one of these girls to betray La Reole, 
an important Huguenot stronghold. The King of 
Navarre heard of this treachery when entertaining 
the Queen-Mother with a ball at Auch. He silently 
slipped from the room, summoned a few trusty com- 
panions and before morning escaladed Fleurance, a 
small town in the neighbourhood, held by a garrison 
of French troops. Catherine when she heard of the 
exploit, only laughed : " It is his revenge for La 
Reole ; cabbage for cabbage, but mine has the better 
heart." 

The Queen-Mother was disappointed in her hope 
of profiting by the estrangement of her daughter and 
son-in-law. Margaret even encouraged her husband's 
gallantries and taught him to tolerate her own. 
Thoroughly acquainted with the objects and methods 
of her mother's policy, she gave him advice which 
though inspired by base motives was in itself useful. 

Catherine's negotiations ended with a promise of 
further securities to the Huguenots and of the com- 
plete redress of their grievances. The non-fulfilment 
of this promise was one of the pretexts of a futile 
resumption of hostilities by the King of Navarre in 
1580 — the so-called Lover's Cour — of which La None 

9 



130 Henry of Navarre, [1576- 

and the most sober Protestants disapproved, and in 
which La Rochelle and other towns refused to take 
any part. The desultory campaign which followed 
only deserves mention for an opportunity it gave 
Henry of conspicuously displaying that valour, not 
less obstinate than fiery, which so greatly impressed 
the imagination of his countrymen and established 
his influence and popularity among the warlike gen- 
try of both religions. 

He had never been able to obtain possession of the 
district of Quercy which had been settled on Margaret 
of Valois as her dower. The inhabitants of Cahors, 
the capital of Quercy, had been notorious usurers 
during the Middle Ages, and the town was still pros- 
perous and wealthy. Defended by strong walls, by 
a garrison of 1,500 men, under a brave and trust- 
worthy governor and still more by its position, for 
the narrow and steep streets wind up to the summit 
of a bold rock surrounded on three sides by a bend 
of the river Lot, Cahors appeared to defy any sudden 
assault. 

Henry, who was at Montauban, marched thirty 
miles under a scorching summer sun with a force not 
miore numerous than the garrison ; and at nightfall 
approached Cahors under cover of the thick groves 
of walnut trees which grew close to where the road 
from Montauban entered the town by a bridge de- 
fended by two gates and other outworks. A heavy 
storm favoured the surprise. Even the explosion of 
the petards by which the gates were blown in was 
mistaken by many for a peal of thunder. But it 
was after they had penetrated into the town that the 



1586] The Protector of the Churches, 131 

assailants realised the full difficulty of their enterprise. 
The garrison was zealously assisted by the towns- 
people, fanatical Catholics, who feared the punish- 
ment of atrocities perpetrated on Huguenot fellow- 
citizens. Every house was a fortress, every steep 
and narrow street a barricaded and well defended 
pass. For five days and nights the conflict was con- 
tinued, amid an indescribable scene of uproar and 
confusion — clash of swords, clanging of bells, volleys 
of firearms, roar of burning houses, shouts of fight- 
ing men and shrieks of women and children. Spent 
with blows, worn out with want of sleep, their 
armour battered, their feet sore and bleeding, almost 
all wounded or bruised by missiles thrown from the 
housetops, those around Henry urged him whilst 
there was yet time to retire from so unequal a con- 
test ; especially since they were not sufficiently 
numerous to occupy the gates and to prevent rein- 
forcements reaching the garrison. But he obstinate- 
ly refused, and at length his perseverence overcame 
the resolution of his opponents and the sack of the 
town rewarded the constancy of his followers. 

The capture of Cahors spread dismay among the 
Catholic towns of the South. Toulouse already saw 
before her gates the avenger of the innocent blood 
so often shed in her streets. 

Henceforward none were disposed to laugh at 
Henry of Bourbon ; but the establishment beyond 
all cavil of his reputation as a fearless and adven- 
turous soldier was all that he gained by his brilliant 
feat of arms. The Huguenots, even had they been 
more unanimous would have been no match for 



132 Henry of Navarre. [1576- 

three powerful armies sent against them by the 
King. That Henry III. consented to treat, and that 
the conferences held at Fleix in Perigord were fol- 
lowed by a treaty confirming all previous concessions 
to the Reformers and to their leader, seems some 
proof that the King was sincerely desirous of peace. 
No doubt also the exhaustion of his finances, the 
ravages of a virulent epidemic, which is said to have 
carried off 30,000 victims in Paris alone, the renewed 
intrigues of Spain and the importunity of his 
brother and mother, again absorbed by ambitious 
projects in the Low Countries, inclined him to mod- 
eration. 

Henry HI. succeeded in putting an end to the 
civil strife which desolated his kingdom, but he 
failed to use the respite which he obtained so as to 
guard against future troubles. L'Estoile certainly 
exaggerates when he complains that nothing could 
have been more perverse and monstrous than the 
government ; that the care of the finances was en- 
trusted to the greatest knaves, of the army to the 
greatest cowards, of the provinces to the greatest 
fools. But his testimony is valuable because it shows 
how completely Henry HI. failed to secure the con- 
fidence of that moderate party on whose support his 
strength depended, and whose opinions are faithfully 
reflected by the Parisian diarist. 

An edict embodying many useful reforms was 
published in 1580. The remark of the same writer 
that this, like all others of the kind, might have 
been endorsed, " Good only for three days," is 
borne out by the preamble to another ordinance of 



1586] The Protector of the Churches. 133 

1583, which complains that Hcence, disorder and 
confusion have so grown, that hardly a trace of old- 
fashioned integrity remains. 

While the reputation of the King of France was 
sinking, the King of Navarre was rising in public 
estimation. No doubt there were vices and follies, 
intrigues and factions enough and to spare at the 
little Court of Nerac or Pau, where, says Aubigne, 
" we were all lovers together," and where the preten- 
tious solemnity of Sully owns that in the soft south- 
ern nights and under the pleasant shade of garden 
walks planted with bay and cypress by Margaret of 
Angouleme, the only converse among courtiers and 
ladies was of love and of the delights to which it 
leads. 

"Our Court," Queen Margaret boasts in her 
memoirs, " was so fair and agreeable that we did not 
envy that of France. ... I had around me 
many ladies and maids in waiting, and the King 
my husband was attended by a gallant following of 
lords and gentlemen ... in whom there was 
no fault to be found except that they were Hugue- 
nots." If Margaret could find no fault in her hus- 
band's courtiers except their religion, we may be 
certain that religion sat but lightly on them. 

The negotiation of the Peace of Fleix was the pre- 
text of a visit of several months paid by the Duke 
of Anjou with his train of rou^s and bravos to his 
brother-in-law and sister. Anjou, who had a monkey- 
like aptitude for mischief annoying to others though 
profitless to himself, succeeded in destroying the 
good understanding based on mutual toleration 



134 Henry of Navarre, [1576- 

which had so far existed between the King and 
Queen of Navarre. It must also be allowed that 
Henry showed a cynical indelicacy in the demands 
he made on his wife's complaisance. 

In 1 58 1 Margaret left her husband's Court, on the 
pretext of a visit to her mother, whose tenderness 
could no longer endure so protracted a separation. 

Aubigne contrasts the virtue of the Court of Na- 
varre with the licence of that of France. There the 
greatest were proud to minister to the King's foulest 
pleasures ; at Pau, Henry's mistress, the Countess of 
Grammont, was neglected. Yet some credit is due 
to this lady, if, after his wife had left him, the King's 
life became more decorous. She is popularly known 
as the mistress to whom he sacrificed the fruits of the 
victory of Coutras. Yet it is possible that without 
her Coutras might neither have been fought nor won. 
Diana, or, as she was commonly called, Corisande 
d'Andouins, widow of Philibert de Guiche, Count of 
Grammont, was a year or two older than her royal 
lover. Of the three women who so influenced his life 
that it is impossible to pass them by in silence, the 
Countess of Grammont was the most respectable. 
She stimulated the ambition of Henry, assisted him 
with her fortune, and shared his councils, nor, though 
a Catholic, disliked and suspected by the Protestants, 
has her fidelity been seriously impugned. Her posi- 
tion, that of a widow who had formed a lasting con- 
nection with a prince separated from his wife, was 
not one which in those days appeared other than 
honourable, nor did the King scruple to entrust his 
sister Catherine to her care. 



15861 The Protector of the Churches. 135 

Henry was always anxious to marry his mistress 
for the time being, a proof that the reiterated and 
passionate protestations of constancy in which his 
letters abound, were not wholly insincere. Tossed 
by fate, ever in the saddle, not less restless by choice 
in his amusements than by necessity in the business 
of life, he had a strong yearning for the quiet joys 
and repose of home. 

Aubigne tells us that his master charged him on 
his allegiance to give him true advice ; and then, 
after citing thirty instances of princes who had mar- 
ried subjects, said that he had promised his hand to 
the Countess of Grammont in case he should, as he 
hoped, obtain a divorce from Margaret. If we may 
believe the garrulous vanity of the Huguenot his- 
torian's old age, he replied that his master must 
remember that he had three parts to play, as King 
of Navarre, as heir to the Crown of France, as Pro- 
tector of the Churches, that in each character he was 
served by a different set of followers, who expected 
a different payment. The servants of the King of 
Navarre and of the Dauphin of France looked for 
honours and temporal rewards, either in the present 
or the future ; the wages of those who followed the 
Protector of the Churches were less easily paid by a 
prince, for if in some things they were his servants, 
in others they were his fellows and for sharing his 
dangers they asked to be repaid by his zeal, by his 
noble actions, his virtues. Aubigne did not suppose, 
so he continued, that hating books as he did, the 
King had himself collected the mischievous examples 
he alleged, but he must remember how very different 



1 36 Henry of Navarre. [1576- 

the position of those princes had been from his own. 
He need not give up his love — this concession from 
a sincere Calvinist is notable — but let him serve and 
honour his mistress by living worthily. 

During the long visit paid by Margaret after 1581 
to the French Court, the emnity between her and 
Henry HI. increased. Provoked by her intrigues 
and her malice, the King avenged himself by pub- 
lishing and exaggerating the scandals of her life. 
He came up to her at a ball in the Louvre and with 
loud anger enumerated her lovers and dalliances, 
reproached her with the birth of a bastard child, and 
bade her rejoin her husband ; she might live more 
decently with him, than where her presence was 
both scandalous and mischievous. After so intoler- 
able an affront the Queen of Navarre hurried from 
Paris, exclaiming that she and Mary of Scots were 
the most wretched among women, that she wished 
some one would end her miserable life ; but such for- 
tune was too good for her, she had neither friends 
nor enemies. Her husband refused to receive her. 
If the charges made against her were true she was 
not fit to be his wife, if they were false his honour 
required that her brother should withdraw and apolo- 
gise for calumnies so atrocious, for an insult so 
humiliating. Aubign6, and then, with further pow- 
ers, Du Plessis-Mornay, were sent to remonstrate 
with Henry HI. on the want of consideration he had 
shown for their master's honour. Apparently, 
Henry HI. repented of his haste. He made a half 
apology, he begged his brother-in-law not to take 
the matter too much to heart. The most virtuous 



1586] The Protector of the Churches. 137 

princesses were subject to such calumnies ; he re- 
minded him of old scandals which had been current 
even about his mother the pious Jane of Albret. 
" His Majesty," laughed the Bearnese, '* does me too 

much honour ; he tells me I am a , by way of 

excuse for calling my wife a wh — ." 

But neither Prince wished to quarrel ; Navarre 
expressed some willingness to receive his wife back, 
if only the royal garrisons were withdrawn from his 
frontiers, so that he might not appear to be acting 
under compulsion, and he claimed credit for rejecting 
the large offers made by Philip 11. — the hand of the 
Infanta Isabella, after Spanish influence at the Vati- 
can should have o-btained for him a divorce from his 
dishonoured wife, and powerful assistance in money 
and men against all enemies if only he would abjure 
his heresy. Nor can it be doubted that Philip II. 
was sincere in making these advances. He was discon- 
tented with the conduct of the Guises and eager to 
avenge himself for the interference of France in the 
Low Countries. 

Henry III. expressed his gratitude to his brother- 
in-law, sanctioned the continued occupation by the 
Protestants of their places of security ; and when the 
uncertainty of the succession in the event of Anjou's 
death was mentioned, showed surprise that the mat- 
ter should be discussed as if open to question. The 
King of Navarre, a prince of exalted birth and good 
parts, whom he loved, was his natural heir. *' I 
know," he said to the Provost of Paris, '' that some 
are trying to supplant him, but I shall take good 
care to prevent them from succeeding " ; as for the 



138 Henry of Navarre. [1576- 

Cardinal of Bourbon who hoped to step into his 
nephew's shoes, he was an old fool. When Anjou 
was dying (May, 1584), Epernon was sent with a 
sumptuous retinue to invite the King of Navarre to 
come to Court to take his place as heir-apparent — 
after first hearing a Mass. The Catholics about him 
had for some time been urging him to remove by his 
conversion the only obstacle to his universal recog- 
nition as heir to the French throne. 

Henry reminded his cousin, the young Cardinal of 
Vendome, that a man's religion, could not be put off 
and on like his shirt. However lightly he held by 
his creed he may well have thought that there was 
as much to be lost as gained by sacrificing it at this 
moment. 

Epernon was therefore answered with protestations 
of gratitude and loyalty — of readiness to receive 
instruction or to submit to the decision of a free and 
universal council ; but the King of Navarre showed 
no eagerness to accept the invitation to Court, and 
still less to go straightway to Mass. 

Yet the fact that the legitimate heir to the throne 
was a heretic made the renewal of the civil war in- 
evitable. Even if all the means which the gold of 
Spain, the intrigues of the Jesuits and the ambition 
of the Guises could set in motion or suggest to excite 
the alarm and stimulate the fanaticism of the popu- 
lace had not been employed, it is not likely that the 
Cathohc majority would quietly have submitted to 
the rule of a Calvinist king. In England and else- 
where they had seen the religion of the country fol- 
low the creed of the prince. The intimate connec- 



15861 The Protector of the Churches. 139 

tion of the State and of the orthodox Church was 
held to be a fundamental law of the monarchy. 
Even moderate men, who were willing that the 
Huguenots should be tolerated, were alarmed at the 
prospect of their domination. 

These feehngs were shared by Henry HI. Though 
it had little influence on his life, he was more sin- 
cerely attached to his religion than Henry of Guise, 
or Henry of Bourbon ; for the former was suspected 
by those who knew him best to be a Lutheran at 
heart, and the latter, like James I. of England, 
believed that faith in God is sufficient to save a man 
let him belong to what sect he may ; although there 
is no reason to doubt, that, as he told the historian 
De Thou five years later, he held the one in which he 
had been bred to be the truest and the best. 

A rapid glance at the condition of the general 
conflict between Protestantism and CathoHcism will 
explain the impatience with which Philip H. and 
his clerical allies saw France gradually settling down 
into something like tranquilHty. In England, the plots 
for assassinating the queen, although approved by 
the Pope and encouraged by the promise of Spanish 
gold and honours, had failed, as well as the schemes 
of domestic rebellion and foreign invasion organised 
by the Spanish ambassador against the sovereign to 
whom he was accredited ; and the abrupt expulsion 
of Don Bernardino de Mendoza made it clear that 
open war between the two countries could not much 
longer be avoided. 

In the Low Countries there seemed little hope 
that without foreign help the exhaustion of the 



140 Henry of Navarre, [1576- 

States would be able to resist the skill and energy 
of Alexander Farnese ; even before the murder of 
Orange, an English envoy had reported '^ that the 
cause was panting and all but dead." Dendermonde 
and Ghent had opened their gates to the Spanish 
troops already closing round Antwerp. In Germany 
the conversion of the Archbishop of Cologne would, 
if he could maintain himself, give a majority in the 
Electoral College to the Reformers ; but in the South 
the Catholic reaction was making rapid progress, 
supported by the Emperor Rudolf, who had been 
educated at the Court of Spain, and who resembled 
in nothing his wise and tolerant father Maximilian II. 

An eminent English historian believes that after 
the death of Orange, Henry III., could he have 
trusted Elizabeth, was willing to defy Spain and the 
League, to place Henry of Navarre at the head of 
his army and in close alliance with England, to fall 
with all his forces on the Duke of Parma. He would 
thus have secured the active co-operation of the King 
of Denmark and of the Elector Palatine, the Arch- 
bishop of Cologne would have been maintained in 
his electorate, and at the next vacancy the Imperial 
crown might have passed from the House of Haps- 
burg. 

We must doubt whether even if he had been will- 
ing to break so completely with his past, to overcome 
his own prejudices and predilections, Henry HI. 
could have taken up and carried out on a bolder 
scale the policy of Coligny. Not the Guises only, 
but his mother, his favourites, the ambitious Eper- 
non not less than the Catholic Joyeuse, would have 



1586] The Protector of the Churches, 141 

resisted to the uttermost, strong in the support of 
populace and church, a course of action which would 
have thrown all power into the hands of the heretic 
heir and his followers. Yet there was much in the 
conduct of the King well calculated to excite the 
alarm of the Catholic and Spanish party. After the 
death of his brother he publicly recognised the King 
of Navarre as his successor, and announced his inten- 
tion of bestowing upon him the duchy of Alengon, 
which had lapsed to the crown. An embassy bring- 
ing from Elizabeth the insignia of the Garter was 
received with the utmost cordiality and magnificence, 
and the King showed himself in public wearing the 
badge sent by an excommunicated heretic. The 
envoys who came to offer the sovereignty of the 
Low Countries obtained, it is true, little but gold 
chains and fair words, yet the Austrian Resident 
assured his master that the active intervention of 
France was daily expected. 

Parma, who dreaded a diversion which might 
compel him to raise the siege of Antwerp, joined 
with Mendoza in urging the League and the Guises 
to action. On January 15, 1585, a formal treaty was 
signed at Joinville by the Dukes of Guise and May- 
enne in their own name and that of their family, by 
a representative of the Cardinal of Bourbon and by 
the Spanish agents Tassis and Moreo. Since no 
heretic might ascend the French throne, it was agreed 
that in the event of the death of Henry IIL, the 
Cardinal of Bourbon should be proclaimed king. 
The contracting parties bound themselves to do their 
utmost to extirpate heresy, both in France and in 



142 Henry of Navarre. [1576- 

the Low Countries. The King of Spain promised a 
subvention of 1,000,000 crowns for the first year, in 
return for which the French princes undertook to 
place him in possession of Cambray, to prevent 
French privateers from preying on Spanish com- 
merce, to hand over to him Don Antonio, the pre- 
tender to the Portuguese Crown, who had found a 
refuge in France, and to renounce all further alliance 
with the Turks. 

The Guises had now secured the co-operation of 
Spain by a formal document ; the preparations of 
their party at home were also well advanced. The 
weakness of the League at the time of the States- 
General of 1576-77 had been conspicuous and unex- 
pected. It was not till after the death of Alen^on, 
when the thought that the heir-apparent of the 
crown was a heretic thrilled Catholic France with 
horror, that it again started into new and vigorous 
life, and received that form and organisation which 
identified it with popular passions and aspirations, 
as well as with feudal and dynastic ambition, and 
which enabled it in close alliance with Spain to bring 
France to the very verge of ruin. 

Paris was the heart of this organisation. The 
capital was divided into five districts under five 
leaders, who with eleven others formed the supreme 
council, the notorious Sixteen. These men were for 
the most part lawyers and tradesmen of middling 
condition, but distinguished for fanatical zeal and 
party spirit, well suited to be the instruments of 
cooler and, if not more scrupulous, yet higher placed 
and more cautious ambition. The parish clergy, the 



1586] The Protector of the Churches. 143 

friars and the Jesuits vied in the violence of their 
sermons. Terror and pity were alike employed to 
excite the mob. A hundred pulpits re-echoed with 
the legend of the virtues and sufferings of the sainted 
Queen of Scots, whose charms and innocence were 
in the eyes of her votaries beyond the reach of 
calumny and years. Great pictures were exposed in 
the cemeteries and public places, exhibiting the tor- 
tures inflicted on Catholic martyrs by the English 
Jezebel, the close ally of the Most Christian King, 
under whose heretic heir the faithful in France must 
expect the like treatment. Nay, they need not hope 
for so long a respite ; ten thousand armed Hugue- 
nots, it was confidently reported, were already lurk- 
ing in the Faubourg St. Germain, awaiting a signal 
to massacre the Christian people of Paris. To guard 
against such dangers, the council of the League were 
diligent in buying arms and in drilling the stoutest 
of their adherents. 

Encouraged by the approbation of the Pope, the 
confederates published their manifesto (March 30, 
1585). They declared that they were prepared to 
draw the sword to restore the dignity and unity of 
the Church, to secure to the nobility their ancient 
privileges, to relieve the people from all new taxes 
imposed since the reign of Charles IX., to drive 
unworthy favourites and advisers from Court, to 
prevent future troubles by settling the succession, 
and to provide for regular meetings of the States- 
General. Until they should have attained these 
objects, they, princes of the blood, cardinals, and 
other princes, peers, prelates, officers of the Crown, 



144 Henry of Navarre. [1576- 

governors of provinces, lords and gentlemen, together 
with sundry good towns and corporations, constitut- 
ing the best and soundest part of the realm, swore 
to hold together and persevere " until they should 
be heaped one upon another in the tomb reserved 
for the last Frenchmen fallen in the service of their 
God and country." Then followed a list of the 
leaders, the Cardinal Charles of Bourbon, " first 
Prince of the Blood," the Dukes of Lorraine and 
Guise, "lieutenant generals of the League," and 
the names of the King of Spain and other Catholic 
sovereigns. 

The King seemed at first disposed to resent this 
bold defiance of his authority. Epernon, never 
wanting in audacity, and who had devoted some of 
the money lavished upon him to secure the services 
of a considerable body of mercenaries, urged him to 
lose no moment in replying to so insolent a challenge. 
Montmorency the governor, or rather sovereign, of 
Languedoc, was to be surely counted upon in a 
struggle against Lorraine and Spain, and would be 
followed by the moderate party. For every man 
whom his enemies could hope to enlist among the 
Swiss, two would hasten to the standard of the King 
of France. Nor was it likely that the majority of 
the smaller nobles, the country gentry, who had 
little to gain by the substitution of the nearer, more 
invidious and oppressive authority of a feudal ruler 
for that of the Crown, would forget their hereditary 
loyalty any more than that the lawyers would aid to 
overthrow the monarchy on which their own import- 
ance depended. As for the Huguenot gentry and 



t586] The Protector of the Churches. 145 

towns, the King of Navarre was urgent in pressing 
their services and that of his own small but excellent 
army on the King. But Henry III., ever undecided, 
averse to strenuous action and preferring middle 
courses and the chances of diplomacy to war, closed 
his ears to bolder councils and allowed himself to be 
influenced by Joyeuse's Catholic fervour and jealousy 
of Epernon and by the advice of his mother, who, 
undeterred by gout, rheums and unwieldy bulk, 
hurried from Paris to negotiate with the Guises. 
Catherine had not become less pusillanimous with 
age, and it had ever been her way to bend before 
those who were in the ascendant, yielding everything 
with the comfortable determination to break her 
word as soon as it should be safe to do so. But on 
this occasion, she was at heart a traitor to her 
favourite son. 

Like the rest of the world, she appears to have 
made up her mind that the King must soon die, and 
she had already survived so many of her children, 
that it seemed to her a matter of course that she 
should survive him. But to lose her power was un- 
endurable, worse to see it pass into the hands of 
Navarre. The old Cardinal of Bourbon v/as a nonen- 
tity, a wine tun rather than a man, as Beza said, and 
after his death Catherine hoped to secure the crown 
for her daughter Claude, the wife of the Duke of 
Lorraine, a prince of weak character, whom she 
would easily control. Thus the Florentine, as if 
immortal, spun her schemes with characteristic inca- 
pacity to distinguish between what was and was not 
possible. Easily alarmed by present difficulties, she 



146 Henry of Navarre. [1576- 

allowed her hopes to blind her to those still future. 
Yet it was easy to foresee that the Guises would work 
for their own aggrandisement and not for that of the 
elder branch of their house ; and that if the Salic law 
was to be violated, Philip II. would not allow the 
superior claims of the Infanta Isabella, the daughter 
of Claude's elder sister, to be passed over. 

After negotiations which lasted two months the 
League presented an ultimatum. The King must 
enforce unity of religion by an edict, which all the 
princes, peers and parliaments, officers of the Crown, 
governors of provinces and towns and other officials 
should swear to observe. 

Henry III. still hesitated. He had written to the 
King of Navarre, warning him to be on his guard, 
and adding that he was glad to hear that he was on 
good terms with the Duke of Montmorency. He 
had not himself been able to prevent the evil designs 
of the Duke of Guise, but at any rate he would not 
conclude any treaty with the League to the disad- 
vantage of his lawful successor. The Queen of Eng- 
land wrote a letter to the King of France, the vigor- 
ous style of which so pleased Henry of Bourbon that 
he sent a copy of it to his Corisande. "' If you could 
know, my dear brother, the pain and grief I feel at 
the danger to which you expose yourself, I am 
assured that you would believe that there is no 
creature in this world on whose help you can more 
surely rely than myself. Good God ! is it possible 
that a great king can bend himself without reason 
and against his honour to sue for peace to rebels and 
traitors, and not at once cut off from them all oppor- 




CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 



1586] The Protector of the Churches. 147 

tunity of exalting themselves, compelling them by his 
royal power to submit to the yoke of their deserts. 
I marvel to see you thus betrayed in your council 
and even by her, who of all the world is nearest to 
you, and that you should be so blind as to tolerate 
such villany . . . Alas ! think you that that cloke of 
religion in which they wrap themselves is so well 
lined that their hope of ruling France in your name 
but at their own discretion, cannot be seen through 
it ? And I pray God that that may content them, 
for Princes held in subjection by their subjects are 
rarely long lived." Let him only, she goes on to say, 
pluck up heart and if he will accept her help they 
will soon put his enemies to greater shame than ever 
rebels felt. If he manfully took his own part, his 
loyal subjects would come to his assistance ; she ended 
by praying God to help him and to raise his courage. 
Brave words and at the time perhaps honestly meant, 
for Elizabeth could not but feel that the victory of 
the League and Spain in France, now, when Parma 
was triumphant in the Low Countries, would be 
the certain prelude to her own overthrow. But 
Henry IIL knew, none better, how little the acts and 
words of the Queen of England were apt to cor- 
respond ; how often the shortest performance would 
follow her largest promises. 

In any case, Elizabeth and Navarre were far away, 
the Queen-Mother was at his ear and her creatures, 
who formed the majority in the royal council, played 
upon the fears of the King, exaggerating the strength 
of the League, the dangerous discontent of the Pa- 
risians. The rebels already held many of the most 



148 Henry of Navarre. [1586 

important towns and fortresses. '' The penitential 
sackcloth of the King," writes a contemporary, 
" was not of proof like the cuirasses of the League, 
they had already mounted their horses and he 
was on foot." On July 5th (1586) their demands 
were granted in the King's name by Catherine 
de' Medici. 

On July i8th the King summoned the Parliament 
of Paris and caused the revocation of the Edicts of 
Toleration to be read and entered upon the rolls in 
his presence. Turning to the Cardinal of Bourbon 
who accompanied him, he said : '' Against my con- 
science, but very willingly, I came here on a pre- 
vious occasion to seek the relief of my people by 
the proclamation of that Edict of Toleration which 
I have now come to revoke, in accordance, it is true, 
with my conscience, but most unwillingly, since from 
this act will follow the ruin of my realm and of my 
people." 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE THREE HENRIES. 
1585-I589. 




iT was useless, now that the forces of 
the Government and of the League 
were united to bring about the ex- 
tirpation of heresy and the triumph 
of Spain, for the King to attempt to 
disclaim responsibility and to wash 
his hands of the blood that was about to be shed. 
We are told that when the King of Navarre heard 
of the treaty between Henry III. and the League, 
pondering long and deeply, his chin resting on his 
hand, the half of his beard on which he leant turned 
white, so great was his apprehension of the evil times 
which he foresaw. The prospects of the struggle 
were indeed unfavourable to the Huguenots. Their 
numbers which had decreased after the Massacre of 
St. Bartholomew, had again grown since the Peace 
of Bergerac ; but they had lost much of their 
old unanimity, and the zeal of many Protestant 
nobles had grown cold. The Duke of Parma had 

149 



150 Henry of Navarre. [1585- 

compelled Antwerp, the last and in every respect the 
most important stronghold of the Cause in Flanders, 
to surrender (August, 1585) ; it seemed unlikely that 
Holland and Zealand, now that William the Silent 
was no more, would long detain the conqueror, who 
might next direct his victorious army against the 
French heretics. 

Contrary to all expectations the war was carried 
on with so little vigour in 1585 and 1586 that the 
Huguenots were able to hold their own. The King 
sent whatever supplies and money he could raise to 
Epernon or Joyeuse and crippled by his ill-will the 
operations of the Leaguers. The nobility generally 
showed little interest in the cause, disliking equally 
the alliance of the Guises with the fanatical demo- 
cracy of the great towns, their disloyalty to the 
Crown, and their subordination to Spain. The sup- 
port of the Duke of Montmorency (Damville), an 
unscrupulous and dissolute man, indifferent to the 
religious question, but the determined enemy of the 
House of Lorraine, secured the predominance of 
the Protestants in Languedoc, while in Poitou they 
had been greatly strengthened by the conversion of 
the young Duke of Thouars, the head of the great 
House of La Tremoille, and grandfather of that 
Countess of Derby v/ho defended Lathom House 
so gallantly in the English Civil Wars. 

The Huguenots might perhaps have been even 
more successful had they not, like their opponents, 
been divided by faction. Cond6wasthe rival rather 
than the lieutenant of his cousin ; the Viscount of 
Turenne and other great nobles were difficult to 



1589] The lliree Henries. 151 

manage and too ready to sacrifice the common good 
to their private aggrandisement, but still the party 
had a head, and that head was Henry of Navarre. 

His activity was prodigious. Not only did he ap- 
pear to see everything and to do everything himself, 
but if there was any quarter from which assistance 
might be hoped, any friend whose zeal needed en- 
couragement, any opponent whose hostility might 
be disarmed, there never was wanting some weighty 
despatch from the pen of Mornay, some shorter but 
pregnant letter written by the King himself, or one 
of those spirited notes, which, says a great critic, 
seem written when his foot was already in the stir- 
rup, which breathe the fresh vigour of the morn- 
ing and recall in their stirring brevity the note of 
horn or trumpet rousing huntsman or soldier. 

What Gascon squire, ever ready for war and adven- 
ture, but must have felt his heart beat quicker on 
receiving such a summons as this : " Put wings to 
your best horse. I have told Montespan to break the 
wind of his. Why? That I will tell you at Nerac. 
Hasten, speed, fly. This is the command of your 
master and the prayer of your friend " ; or this : 
''You will doubtless not have failed to sell your 
woods and they will have produced some thousand 
pistoles. If so, be sure to bring me all you can, for 
I never in my life was in such need ; and I do not 
know when, or whence, or if ever I shall be able 
to repay you. But I can promise you abundant 
honour and glory, and gentlemen like you and me 
do not live on money." 

Even before the conclusion of the treaty between 



152 Henry of Navarre. [i585- 

the King and the League, Henry had appealed to 
his countrymen in a manifesto pubhshed at Bergerac 
(June, 1585). He was a good Christian and no here- 
tic, since he was willing to receive instruction from a 
free and general council while a heretic is one who 
obstinately persists in error. Neither was he, as his 
enemies pretended, a persecutor. He had never 
interfered with Catholic worship in the towns he 
occupied, but had protected the monks and priests 
and had left them the use of the churches, while he 
retired to pray with his fellow believers in some pri- 
vate house. His enemies in their solicitude to settle 
the succession to the throne had chosen as heir to 
the Crown of France, an old and childless man of 
sixty-six, as if the King who was married and in the 
vigour of his life had only a year or two to live. 
He was anxious above all to spare his country the 
evils of civil war; for this he would even surrender 
the towns held by the Protestants, although neces- 
sary, as experience had shown to their safety, pro- 
vided that the chiefs of the League would also place 
the fortresses they occupied in the King's hands. 
If they would do the like, he would also resign his 
governments. Should these offers not be acceptable, 
the quarrel might be fought out without injury and 
ruin to the Commonwealth, if the Duke of Guise 
would meet him in single combat or with ten or 
twenty champions on each side. 

Next followed (August 10, 1585) a declaration 
published in the names of the King of Navarre, the 
Prince of Conde, the Duke of Montmorency and 
** the lords, gentlemen, towns and communities of 



53 



1589] The Three Henries. 

both creeds associated for the defence of the realm," 
accusing the House of Lorraine of seeking to over- 
throw the Monarchy and of being the source of all 
the sufferings of the country. In attacking these 
traitors, the associates protested that they had no 
aim but the service and independence of the King. 
The German Princes, the Kings of Denmark and Scot- 
land, the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, the Eng- 
lish nobles and their Queen were warned, that the 
Holy League had devoted them all to the same 
destruction, that nothing appeared inaccessible to 
the ambition of Spain, which already stretched across 
so many seas and lands. Therefore they should 
support:) those who were fighting in France against 
the common enemy and his allies, the rebels who 
had compelled their king to break his edicts and to 
attack his most faithful subjects. 

Nor was the papal bull left unanswered, which 
Sixtus v., more violent though less favourable to the 
League and Spain than Gregory XHL, had ful- 
minated against Henry of Bourbon. The astonished 
Romans awoke one morning to see the celebrated 
statues of Pasquin and Marforio and the doors of the 
principal churches decorated by a document which 
professed to be a proclamation of Henry, by the 
Grace of God, King of Navarre and Prince of B^arn, 
in which he gave the he to '' Monsieur Sixte," self- 
styled Pope of Rome, asserted that he was prepared 
to prove him a heretic in a free and oecumenical 
council, and declared that he would avenge on the 
Bishop of Rome and his successors the insult done to 
the royal House of France in his person. 



154 Henry of Navarre. [1585- 



Sixtus, bold himself, appreciated boldness in others 
and was disposed to admire rather than to be angry 
with the audacity of Henry and the faithful courage 
of his agents. The insulting document itself was 
written not by a Protestant,, but by a Galilean lawyer 
and placeman, L'Estoile, whose diary is one of the 
most useful documents for the history of this period, 
as a record of the feelings and opinions of the most 
enlightened, the most honest and moderate of the 
middle class. 

The Parliament of Paris showed its hostility to the 
League and its readiness to support the King should 
he venture on a bolder policy, not only by vigorous 
protests against the infraction of Galilean liberties by 
the unauthorised publication of a Bull, excommuni- 
cating the first Prince of the Blood, but also by 
declaring that it was monstrous to expose millions of 
men, women and children to death without apparent 
cause on an ill-established and vague charge of heresy, 
and that it would not honour as royal edicts, the 
articles of an unconstitutional league, in arms not 
only against God but against nature, which com- 
manded fathers to be no longer fathers, friend to be- 
tray friend, and which promised to the assassin the 
spoils of his victim. 

The Guises on the other hand, conscious that they 
were hated by the King, and that at any moment he 
might turn against them, did not cease to discredit 
and undermine his authority, and their fears when 
Catherine began once more to negotiate with the 
King of Navarre, were not allayed by the protesta- 
tions of the Queen-Mother and her son, that their 



1589] 



The Three Henries. 155 



only object was to prevent or delay the invasion of 
France by a powerful army of German Protestants. 

The German Princes declared that it was to Francis 
I. and Henry 11. that Germany owed the toleration 
of Protestantism, and that gratitude for what those 
kings had done compelled them to endeavor to 
secure the like boon for France. The Protestant 
Swiss cantons allowed 10,000 men to enHst for the 
service of the King of Navarre. These mercenaries, 
when united with the Germans and with a body of 
French refugees, formed an army of some 30,000 
men. They were to march from the Rhine to the 
Loire and there to join the forces of the King of 
Navarre^ 

Henry HI. determined to send his favourite 
Joyeuse against the Huguenots, and himself to take 
the command of the army opposed to the Germans. 
Even the Duke of Guise, lieutenant-general of the 
League though he was, could not pretend to the 
supreme command when the King in person was 
present. 

At Coutras on the borders of Saintonge and Peri- 
gord, a few miles north of Libourne on the Dor- 
dogne, Henry of Bourbon met Joyeuse and won the 
first victory which had been gained by the Protes- 
tants in twenty-five years of civil war (October 20, 

1581). 

The King's minions and courtiers had crowded 
to serve under Joyeuse and vied in the magnificence 
of their arms and equipments. As the autumn sun 
shone on the first ranks of the Catholic army, wholly 
composed of nobles resplendent with embroidery 



156 Henry of Navarre. [1585- 

and gold, Henry pointed out the glittering line to 
the Protestant gentry, who had cut down their tim- 
ber and mortgaged their estates to equip themselves 
and their followers with the bare necessaries of war. 
His words have been compared to that proclamation 
in which Bonaparte inflamed the zeal of his ragged 
and half starved battalions by the prospect of plun- 
der and licence in the fertile plains and luxurious 
cities of Italy. '' Here, my friends, you have before 
you a very different quarry from any we have hith- 
erto followed. A bridegroom [Joyeuse had been 
recently married] with his wife's dowry still in his 
pocket and accompanied by the flower of the Court. 
Courage ! there is none among you of so little 
account that he shall not henceforth ride a made 
charger and be served on silver plate." But it was 
not with thoughts of booty alone that the Hugue- 
nots entered the battle. They threw themselves on 
their knees to implore God's help. The young 
courtiers round Joyeuse shouted, '' They are afraid ! 
they are confessing themselves," and were urgent to 
be allowed to charge, and the more so because the 
enemy's artillery well directed by Rosny, was plough- 
ing long furrows through their ranks. As the 
Catholic army advanced, the Protestants, led by the 
■ King's chaplains sang the triumphant verses of 
(the 1 1 2th psalm. " They came about me like bees, 
and are extinct even as the fire among the thorns, 
for in the name of the Lord I will destroy them." 
While Henry turned to the Prince of Cond6 and his 
brother the Count of Soissons, " Cousins, I have 
only to remind you that you belong to the family of 



1589] The Three Henries. 157 

Bourbon, and, God's life ! I will prove to you that I 
am its head." 

The King of Navarre handled his army, which 
though about equal to the enemy in infantry, was 
greatly inferior in cavalry, with great judgment. 
He made up for the light equipment and inferior 
numbers of his horse by drawing them up in deep 
masses and placing his matchlock men betAveen their 
columns. It was not till Joyeuse's men-at-arms were 
within a few yards, the heavy men and horses tired 
with attempting to trot up the rising ground, and 
galled with the fire of musketry, that Henry headed 
the decisive charge upon their extended line. The 
pistolsof the Huguenots emptied many a saddle, 
before they closed, and fighting hand to hand their 
opponents could not use their lances. In an hour 
the royalist army was in headlong flight. Joyeuse 
himself, 400 gentlemen and 2,000 soldiers were killed ; 
the booty gained by the Huguenots, who lost but 
forty men, was immense. 

Although so complete, the victory of Coutras had 
no important results. Henry has been blamed for not 
pressing on to join the advancing Germans, after 
which he might have fallen with superior forces on 
the King, or have extorted peace by a bold march on 
Paris. He sacrificed his victory to love, says Aubigne 
— and some years later, his chaplain D'Amours 
reminded him how he had vainly urged him on 
the morning after the battle to use to the utmost 
the victory God had given him. Yet we can scarcely 
believe that his conduct at so important a crisis was 
determined by his desire to lay his laurels at the 



158 Henry of Navarre. [1585- 

feet of the Countess of Grammont. Devoted 
though he was to his mistresses, Henry maintained 
that he never had preferred them to the interests 
of the State, and after reading his voluminous cor- 
respondence, it is difficult not to allow, that, at 
any rate during the earlier part of his life, the boast 
was not ill founded, nor was Corisande the woman 
to expect or encourage such weakness in her lover. 

It was in part the completeness of the defeat of 
the Catholics, which was their salvation. Henry 
could not keep his army together, so eager were the 
soldiers to secure and carry home their booty. 
Moreover, a large part of his forces consisted of the 
levies of the districts in the immediate neighbour- 
hood, Poitou, Saintonge, Angpumois, who had come 
prepared to fight a battle, but not equipped for a 
campaign. These and other reasons for inaction are 
alleged in a despatch to Elizabeth of England. 

It may perhaps be thought that the eagerness with 
which Henry excuses his failure to meet his allies, 
argues a consciousness of some want of energy on 
his part, but it was necessary to keep the Queen 
of England in good humour, and she was natu- 
rally incensed at the futile conclusion of an expedition 
to further which she had done violence to her 
habitual parsimony. 

John Casimir, the brother of the Elector Pala- 
tine, from some strange scruple about attacking the 
neighbouring House of Lorraine, had not placed 
himself at the head of the motley army he had as- 
sembled. He entrusted the command to Fabian of 
Dohna, a Prussian noble of considerable military ex- 



1589] The Three H entries. 159 

perience and of great zeal for the Protestant cause, 
but of neither sufficient reputation nor rank to com- 
mand the ready and cheerful obedience of his sub- 
ordinates. The Swiss, when they found the King 
of France in person opposed to them, refused to 
fight, and gladly accepted Henry Ill's offer to pay 
them 400,000 ducats to go home. The confederates 
reached the Loire. Instead of being met by a Pro- 
testant army they found the towns and bridges occu- 
pied by the King. The Guises were advancing in 
their rear ; and at Auneau surprised the Germans in 
their quarters and inflicted on them a loss of 2,000 
men. After this slaughter and the desertion of the 
Swiss, the whole Protestant army barely amounted 
to 12,000. They were without any definite plan of 
operations, the season was late and inclement, the 
soldiers were exhausted by fatigue and disease, 
the line of march was marked by abandoned waggons, 
by the corpses of men who had fallen out of the 
ranks from sickness or fatigue and had been piti- 
lessly slaughtered by the peasantry in retaliation for 
their rapine and cruelty. One woman boasted that 
she had with her knife cut the throats of seventeen 
of these accursed heretics, who had crept into a barn 
for a little shelter before they died. The Germans 
followed the course of the Loire till they saw before 
them the high mountains in which it rises. On the 
other side of the hills was a friendly district and 
towns garrisoned by their allies. Chatillon, the 
eldest son of the Admiral, who accompanied the 
invaders with a body of French refugees, undertook 
to clear the passes and lead the army into Languedoc 



i6o Henry of Navm^re. [1585- 

in four days. But the offer of the King, to assist 
them to return to their own country if they would 
swear never again to bear arms in France, was too 
tempting to be refused. Bolder counsels would have 
been safer. The Guises treated the royal safe con- 
duct as valid only in France ; as soon as the retreating 
Germans had crossed the frontiers of Franche-Comt6, 
they fell upon them and cut the greater number to 
pieces. 

The campaign of 1589 had decided nothing. The 
hopes of the Huguenots were not crushed by the 
misfortunes of their alhes ; since the victory of 
Coutras they felt confidence in their own unassisted 
strength. 

The enmity of Henry HI. and of Guise was em- 
bittered. The failure of the German invasion was 
really due to the negotiations of the former, but all 
the credit was ascribed by the populace to the latter. 
He was a glorious conqueror, the King had treach- 
erously saved the Swiss from his avenging sword 
and had given them money into the bargain. Henry 
HI. found that he had only bestirred himself to 
increase the power and popularity of the Duke. He 
bitterly declared to his courtiers that the King of 
Navarre was not his worst enemy. The morning 
after Coutras, Henry of Bourbon had written : " Sire, 
my lord and brother, return thanks to God, I have 
defeated your foes and your army. You will hear 
from the bearer, whether, though I stand sword in 
hand in the midst of your kingdom, it is I who am, 
as it is pretended, your enemy," and the King of 
France was disposed to believe that his brother-in- 



15891 The Three Henries. i6i 

law spoke the truth ; that Henry of Guise was his 
worst enemy he at any rate did not doubt. A 
remarkable despatch, written by the English ambas- 
sador, throws light upon the situation and upon the 
character of the Frerich King. Sir E. Stafford tells 
how secretly and by night he was brought to a 
house where he met Henry HI. alone. The King 
began by saying that in the confidence that his words 
would be communicated to no one but the Queen of 
England he would explain openly and fully the po- 
sition in which he found himself, so that his sister 
might consult thereon with her most secret council- 
lors, she had such, and wise; he had no one whom 
he could trust. By the advice of the Queen-Mother 
and his council he had refused a proposal made by 
Elizabeth to mediate between him and the Hugue- 
nots ; but he besought her to do so with all his heart ; 
and above all to persuade Navarre to have a care of 
his own interests and to accommodate himself to him 
in such sort {i. e. by his conversion) that the League 
might have no pretext to undo him and France. He 
himself was a good Catholic, and wished all France 
to be Catholic, but he was not such a bigot as to prefer 
to ruin himself and his kingdom rather than tolerate 
the Reformers. If the Germans had shown valour 
and discretion they might have brought the League 
on their knees. Why had they not attacked Lor- 
raine, Champagne and Burgundy, instead of fol- 
lowing him to the Loire? He had been obliged 
to act as he had, so as not to leave all honour 
to the Guises. Stafford remarked that it hardly 
seemed to be to the King's interest that Henry of 



162 Henry of Navarre, [1586- 

Bourbon should conform. All men would then turn 
to the rising sun. The King was silent for a while. 
He then said every one could rule a shrewd wife 
except he that had her, and such was his case ; 
he hardly knew which way to turn, yet he would 
rather risk what might come from Navarre. 

The feelings with which they were regarded by 
Henry HI. were well known to the League. Seditious 
pamphlets were hawked about the streets of Paris and 
the pulpits rang with discourses not less outspoken. 
The King, it was repeated, sympathised with the 
Huguenots ; he had saved their foreign allies from 
destruction, he had advised his dear friend the 
English Jezebel to murder the sainted Queen of 
Scots. He left the troops who were shedding their 
blood for God and country to starve, while he 
squandered vast sums on the atheist Epernon, and on 
indecent orgies and follies. The Sorbonne in secret 
session — thirty or forty dirty pedants and masters 
of arts, grumbles L'Estoile — decided that incom- 
petent and faithless princes may rightly be deposed. 

The '' Sixteen " and their most violent supporters 
plotted to seize the King's person. The Duchess 
of Montpensier, the sister of the Guises, whose fer- 
vid fanaticism and feminine recklessness were the 
useful instruments of her brother Guise's calculating 
ambition, boasted that she wore at her girdle the 
scissors which should give Henry of Valois his third 
crown, the tonsure. 

The leaders of the faction met at Nancy and 
agreed upon new articles to be presented as an ulti- 
matum to the King. In these they demanded that 



158$] The Three Henries. 163 

he should assume a less ambiguous attitude, wage a 
war of extermination against the heretics, dismiss 
all suspected ministers and officers, accept the 
decrees of the Council of Trent, establish the Holy 
Inquisition, place more fortresses in the hands of 
the Princes of the League, and provide for the pay- 
ment of their troops ; the last might be done by 
selling the estates of the heretics and of their allies, 
the skin of the living bear. The King again began 
to negotiate — not daring to reject these insolent 
proposals. 

In the spring of 1588 the Invincible Armada was 
preparing to sail, and Parma had received orders to 
collect his forces and to be prepared to embark as 
soon as the Spanish fleet had swept the narrow seas. 
But if this was to be done with any degree of safety, 
it was absolutely necessary that the action of France 
should be paralysed. Otherwise so favourable an 
opportunity of interfering in Flanders, and the 
vital importance of not allowing England to become 
a Spanish province, would not suffer even the most 
supine and irresolute of French kings to remain 
inactive. 

The Spanish ambassador was accordingly ordered 
to insist that the League should either compel the 
King to give satisfactory pledges of his devotion to 
the Catholic cause, or deprive him of the power of 
becoming dangerous. 

Henry III., aware of the plots against his liberty, 
if not against his Hfe, was fortifying himself in the 
Louvre, and had garrisoned that palace, the Bastille, 
and the Arsenal with a strong force of Swiss. The 



164 Henry of Navarre. [1585- 

Sixteen and the Spanish envoys urged Guise to 
hasten to the Capital. 

Not only did Henry of Guise, in defiance of the 
King's prohibition, enter Paris where he was re- 
ceived with delirious joy as a conqueror and saviour, 
he had even the incredible audacity to venture 
almost unaccompanied into the Louvre. The King 
grew white with anger when the approach of the 
Duke was announced. " He shall die ! " he ex- 
claimed with a vehement oath. An Italian priest 
who stood by quoted the text, " I will smite the 
shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered." " Stone 
dead," said the soldiers about the King, ''hath no 
fellow " ; but the courtiers who feared the vengeance 
of the people, urged caution, they described the ex- 
cited crowds who thronged the streets and even 
the courtyard of the Palace. While Henry hesitated, 
Guise entered, accompanied by the Queen-Mother ; 
he looked pale and discomposed ; he had passed 
through ranks of armed men ; Crillon the Captain of 
the Guard had defiantly neglected to return his 
salute. " I ordered you not to come," were the 
first words of the King. '' Sire, I received no ex- 
press command," replied Guise, " or I should not 
have ventured into your presence, though I have but 
come to beg for justice against the calumnies of my 
enemies." Catherine, alarmed at the evident rage 
of her son, led him aside and urged him to do noth- 
ing which might provoke the fury of the people. 
What protection could a few thousand Swiss afford 
against the armed multitude of Paris ? Guise took 
advantage of the opportunity to escape from so 



1589] The Three Henries. 165 

dangerous a situation. When he next visited the 
Louvre he was accompanied by 400 gentlemen, who 
wore arms under their clothes. 

It was evident that the King was raging under the 
yoke of the League, and that he would throw it off 
if occasion offered. Epernon had occupied Lagny 
on the Marne with his troops, and was about to se- 
cure Rouen and Orleans. Holding these towns he 
could threaten Paris on all sides afid interrupt the 
supplies and trade of the great city. The ferment 
among the inhabitants increased. The King 
ordered the municipal militia, supported by 6,000 
Swiss, to occupy the most important points of the 
city. The trainbands either refused to obey the 
summons of their captains, or deserted the posts 
they were ordered to hold. Barricades arose every- 
where in the narrow streets. The Swiss were sur- 
rounded by an armed mob, and themselves without 
shelter were exposed to the fire of enemies covered 
by the barricades and by the houses which they had 
occupied and turned into fortresses. 

When Guise showed himself it was to protect the 
King's troops from the fury of the people, and to 
release those who had laid down their arms on a 
promise that their life should be spared. Unarmed, 
in a white silken doublet and a switch in his hand, 
he walked through the enthusiastic crowd deprecat- 
ing their rapturous applause — '^ Enough, enough, 
dear friends, cry Long Hve the King." Next morn- 
ing a threatening mob, the dregs of the people, led 
by a sacred band of friars and students of the Uni- 
versity, assembled with cries of ''To the Louvre," 



1 66 Henry of Navarre. ri585- 

" Let us fetch brother Henry," for the fanatics now 
talked of nothing less than of deposing the King and 
compelling him to end his days in some monastery. 
Fearing for his liberty and his life the King fled 
through the one gate he still held, the Porte Neuve, 
situated near the middle of the great gallery of the 
present Louvre, and took horse at the stables of the 
Tuileries, accompanied by his courtiers and the 
majority of his Council. So unpremeditated was 
this flight that many mounted their horses unbooted, 
in silken hose and robes of office. The guards at the 
Porte de Nesle fired across the river at the motley 
cavalcade as it passed along the bank, while the peo- 
ple shouted taunts and insults. On the hill of Chail- 
lot, Henry turned to look once more on the Capital 
he was never again to enter. " Ungrateful city," he 
muttered, " I loved you more than my wife." 

No pursuit was attempted ; Henry HL a prisoner 
in the Duke's hands would have been a terrible source 
of embarrassment ; it would have been difficult to 
find a cage for such a bird. It is not likely that the 
ambition of Henry of Guise extended to the throne. 
He wished for the sword of Constable, the position 
of Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and these he 
felt certain that he would be able to obtain by the 
vote of the Estates and from the fears of the King. 
The prize for which he strove seemed already within 
his grasp ; but the death or captivity of the King 
would have revived the loyal instincts of the nation, 
his follies and vices would have been forgotten, a 
civil war would have been kindled, which would have 
invited the ambitious intervention of Spain, have 



1589] 



The Three Henries. 167 



given an opportunity to the Huguenots and at the 
end of which Guise, even if successful, could scarcely 
hope to be more powerful than he was already. If 
more splendid hopes dazzled his ambition their 
realisation would be easier, when, after the natural 
death of the last Valois, a distant collateral and a 
heretic was the heir of the Capets. Then the Con- 
stable and Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, dis- 
posing of the army and of the administration, might 
assert the right of the orthodox Church and people 
of France to prefer a prince of the old Carolingian line. 

It is difficult to say what was the policy of Henry 
III. during the six months which elapsed between 
the Day of the Barricades (May 12, 1588) and the 
assassination of Guise (December 23, 1588). 

It is probable that as yet he had no fixed plan, but, 
living from hand to mouth, left the morrow to take 
thought for itself, — a policy consisting in the absence 
of all policy, commoner, Aubigne remarks, among 
princes than those would readily believe who have 
not enjoyed their confidence. 

The sufferings of the people, the anarchy and dis- 
solution of every principle of order, could not escape 
the notice of the most careless observer. Already, 
as at the time of the English wars, the peasantry, 
tired of sowing when they were not allowed to reap, 
were abandoning the plough to live as brigands on 
the highways, or to collect in large bands among the 
forests. '' Gallia silvescit," wrote Du Plessis-Mornay 
in 1587. "One who had fallen asleep twenty-five years 
ago, would, if he now awoke, imagine himself trans- 
ported to sortie barbarous island," 



1 68 Henry of Navarre. [1585- 

To avoid an open breach with the League and 
such an outbreak of civil war as must complete the 
ruin of the country, the King offered to yield every- 
thing to Guise short of the entire government of the 
state ; and when the Estates met at Blois (October, 
1588) made another attempt to gain the confidence 
of the Catholic party. 

He offered the largest concessions, the fullest con- 
fession of his errors in the past and the most explicit 
promises of future amendment. '' I know, gentle- 
men, that I have sinned, I have offended God — but 
for the future I will do better — I will reduce my 
expenses to the lowest limit, where there were two 
capons on my table there shall henceforth be only 
one." He even most reluctantly recognised the Car- 
dinal of Bourbon as first Prince of the Blood, and 
assented to a declaration that, as a relapsed heretic, 
the King of Navarre had forfeited his right to the 
succession. 

But no concession would satisfy his opponents ; 
they drove him from point to point, inflicted humilia- 
tion upon humiliation, until at length he turned 
savagely to bay. 

He was warned, even, it is said, by members of 
the House of Lorraine, who were jealous of their 
kinsman, that the Duke of Guise intended to pro- 
cure a confirmation of his authority and the dignity 
of Constable from the Estates and carrying the 
King back to Paris to govern the kingdom in his 
name. 

As Henry HL had before shared with his mother 
the mistake of supposing that the whole future and 



1589] The Three Henries. 169 

strength of the Protestant party depended on the 
life of Coligny, so he now seems to have beHeved 
that the League was incarnate in Guise, that if he 
could be removed, the Catholic party would wel- 
come the King as their leader. Some of his most 
intimate advisers encouraged him in this view, quot- 
ing an Italian proverb, *' No fear of the dead viper's 
venom." The Duke was repeatedly warned that his 
life was in danger. A few days before his assassina- 
tion he debated with his friends whether he should 
leave Blois — in other words begin a civil war against 
the King, or continue to coerce Henry by his pres- 
ence and by the authority of the Estates. The 
former Course would have compelled Henry HI. to 
make common cause with the Protestants and the 
Politicians, and unless he was prepared to become 
the mere tool of Spain, Guise was not strong enough 
to struggle against such a combination. Many of 
the nobles, who had at first adhered to the League, 
had been disgusted by the court it had paid to the 
democracy of the towns and by the contumelious 
treatment of the King. The League, it was said, 
had gained the Huguenots more adherents in three 
months than they could by their own efforts have 
secured in thirty years. The personal followers on 
whose devotion Guise might count, his advisers and 
confidants, were men of tarnished reputation and 
broken fortunes. He determined therefore not to 
risk the failure of his plans by leaving Blois : if he 
saw death come in at the window he would not, he 
said, escape by the door. Besides he too thor- 
oughly despised the King, who affected to be more 



1 70 Henry of Navarre. [1585- 

than ever immersed in frivolity and devotion, to be- 
lieve him capable of any energetic and determined 
resolution. There was, he said, no spark of manliness 
or courage left in him. He forgot that the vilest 
reptile will turn when trodden on, that the most timid 
beast will defend itself if no way of escape remains. 
In those days political assassination was regarded 
as one of the ordinary resources of statecraft, and, 
when we remember that even two generations later 
the chivalrous Montrose advised Charles I. to get 
rid in this way of Hamilton and Argyle, we must 
allow that the murder of the Duke of Guise, an un- 
doubted traitor, too stout to be dealt with in the 
ordinary course of law, can scarcely be accounted a 
crime. Yet it was accompanied by dramatic circum- 
stances which have impressed the imagination of 
posterity. The shivering, frightened King, rising in 
the black winter night, to prepare the death of his 
accomplice in a far bloodier scene of midnight 
slaughter ; his long suspense after he had placed his 
guards in the narrow passage through which the 
Duke must pass when summoned from the Council 
Chamber to his presence ; the meeting of the Coun- 
cil in the gray rainy December twilight ; the mur- 
derous scuffle heard by the old Queen who lay on 
her death-bed below ; all this has been often de- 
scribed. Guise in his death struggle dragged himself 
and his assailants as far as the King's room. It was 
told that there, as Guise sixteen years before had 
spurned the murdered Admiral, so Henry now kicked 
the corpse of his enemy, saying, as was noted by 
those who were curious in omens and in other 




DUKE HENRY OF GUISE. 
From the painting by F. Clouet. 



1589] 



The Three Henries. 171 



obscure suggestions of the future, ^^ He seems even 
greater dead than ahve." 

The Duke's brother, the Cardinal of Guise, the 
Archbishop of Lyons, Espinac, author of the Ga- 
veston, a scurrilous libel in which Epernon and his 
master were compared to Edward 11. of England 
and his favourite, together with the old Cardinal of 
Bourbon, were arrested in the Council Chamber and 
other leaders of the League on the same day, but of 
these only the Cardinal of Guise was put to death. 

The King's first visit was to the Queen-Mother. 
He told her triumphantly that at length he was 
King of France, for he had killed the King of Paris. 
She said:: ''You have cut boldly into the stuff, my 
son, but will you know how to sew it together?" 

Henry HL was indeed much mistaken in sup- 
posing that the death of the Duke would make 
him King of France — he was soon in danger of be- 
ing little more than King of Blois. Yet, had he 
acted vigorously, it is possible that his position might 
have been improved by the bold stroke he had 
ventured. 

He should have justified himself by some solemn 
form of judicial inquiry. This he might easily have 
done, for the treason of Guise was patent. He 
should have appealed to the loyalty of his nobles, 
recalled Epernon and his soldiers and taken the field 
at the head of his army. Even had he done so, the 
grief and fury excited among the popular and fanati- 
cal section of the League by the death of their idol 
might have stirred them to a resistance which he 
could only have overcome by the help of theProtes- 



172 Henry of Navarre, [1585- 

tants : but he showed no vigour. He remained at 
Blois trying to persuade the Estates to be reason- 
able, seeking to conciliate when conciliation was im- 
possible, and by the release of Brissac and other 
violent partisans gave leaders to his rebels. 

In Paris the news of the assassination of Guise 
produced an uncontrollable outburst of sorrow and 
passion. The tidings reached the town on Christmas 
Eve. At once all signs of rejoicing and festivity 
disappeared. The churches were thronged with 
mourning crowds, who listened to funeral chants 
unaccompanied by music, which took the place of 
the cheerful services appointed for the most joyful of 
Christian festivals. The preachers did their best to 
raise the contagious emotions of the people to the 
highest pitch of fury. They denounced in unmeas- 
ured terms the treacherous murderer, the Ahab, the 
impure Herod, the Judas possessed not by one but 
by 10,000 devils, to whom they would no longer 
give the name of king. The Sorbonne (Jan. 17, 
1589) solemnly declared that, owing to his manifold 
crimes, the subjects of Henry HI. were released 
from their allegiance. The Parliament attempted 
to resist, by continuing to administer justice in the 
King's name, but the more obstinate magistrates 
were thrown into the Bastille, and the more pliant 
compelled to make common cause with the munici- 
pality and with the Council which had been appointed 
to carry on the government in the name of the Holy 
Catholic Union. 

The Duke of Mayenne, the eldest surviving brother 
of Guise, presided, with the style of Lieutenant- 



1589] The Three Henries, 173 

General of the Realm and Crown of France, over 
this Council, which was composed of the most 
important Catholic nobles, of some of the most 
prominent preachers and doctors of the Sorbonne, 
of a few members of the High Court of Justice, of 
representatives of the city of Paris and of the other 
towns which adhered to the League. For the 
example of Paris had been followed by many other 
great cities — Rouen, Amiens, Abbeville, Troyes and 
Rheims, Toulouse, Orleans, almost the whole of 
Burgundy, Brittany and Provence, besides numerous 
towns in other parts of the country, refused any 
longer to recognise the King's authority. On all 
sides he saw his power crumbling away. Mayenne 
contemptuously rejected all overtures. He would 
not give Henry of Valois the title of King. He was, 
he said, a miserable wretch, in whose promises it was 
impossible to place any further confidence. As the 
fanatics were irreconcilably hostile and his own 
unsupported strength was unequal to the unavoid- 
able conflict, the King could no longer hesitate to 
accept the help offered to him by Henry of Navarre. 
The small advantage reaped from the victory of 
Coutras, the discouragement of his German allies by 
the destruction of the forces they had levied, the ill- 
temper of the Queen of England, who complained 
that her subsidies had been wasted, the dread, 
common to all Protestants, of some fatal blow to be 
dealt to the Cause by the mighty armament collect- 
ing in the Spanish ports, the jealousy of the 
Princes of his family, the disunion among his fol- 
lowers, and, lastly, the complete submission, as it 



1 74 Henry of Navarre. [1585- 

seemed, of the King to their common enemies, had 
severely tried even the serene and persistent self- 
confidence of Henry of Bourbon. " The devil is 
loose," he wrote in March, 1588, to his Corisande, 
*' I am indeed to be pitied, and it is a wonder that 
I do not sink under my load. If I were not Hugue- 
not I should turn Turk. Oh, by what violent trials 
my head is racked ! This year will be my touch- 
stone ; I must assuredly either become mad or turn 
out a clever man." But such moods of doubt and 
depression did not last long. Two years before he 
had written that his own head was the best part of 
his Council, and that his judgment was rarely at 
fault ; and although we must allow some credit to 
his advisers, and above all to Du Plessis-Mornay, the 
skill with which he steered through the dangers of 
this crisis justify the boast. 

In the field he maintained his reputation as a 
skilful captain and fearless soldier. When, in No- 
vember, 1588, the representatives of the Huguenot 
Churches met at La Rochelle, a tone of manlier 
resolution may well have been given to their delib- 
erations by the sight of the standards taken from the 
enemy, which decorated the roof of the hall in which 
they met. 

The death of Conde, March 5, 1588, who perished 
the victim of a domestic crime, in which his wife 
Charlotte de la Tr^moille was implicated, freed 
Henry from a rival in the affections of his party and 
from comparisons not always to his advantage. 

The King of Navarre sincerely lamented his 
cousin. " One of the greatest misfortunes possible 



1589] The Three Henries. 175 

has befallen me," he wrote to his mistress, ^' the 
sudden death of the Prince. They have poisoned 
him, the miscreants ... a wicked woman is 
a dangerous beast," yet, he added, he lamented 
rather what his cousin ought to have been to him, 
than what he had been. He had discovered a new 
plot to take his own life. These murderers were all 
Papists, and he hoped that Corisande would abandon 
a religion which brought forth such fruits. To his 
Chaplain he wrote : ''What a miserable age this is, 
which produces monsters who, though assassins, 
think to be held men of honour and virtue." 

Though the Assembly at La Rochelle passed some 
useful measures, it was by no means to the taste of 
the Protector of the Churches. He bore with char- 
acteristic patience the exhortations of the ministers 
that he should amend the irregularities of his private 
life ; but he warmly resented the criticism of his 
public policy, and the proposal of some to place 
the French Protestants under the protection of the 
Elector Palatine : and did not conceal his displeasure 
at the appointment of a permanent Council consist- 
ing of princes and nobles and of representatives of 
the general and provincial synods. " If there is to 
be another meeting," he complained, " I shall go 
stark mad. But, thank God, all is ended and well 
ended." 

The Assembly had scarcely dispersed, and Henry 
was collecting his troops for a winter campaign, 
when the news came of the assassination of Guise. 
Although Aubigne professes that the Huguenot gen- 
try loudly lamented the treachery of which he had 



I "j^y Henry of Navarre. ri585- 

been the victim, extolling the virtues of the dead 
and the courtesies which many had received from 
him, yet the general feeling was one of relief and 
exultation. " How many men," Du Plessis-Mornay 
exclaimed, " have been overthrown in this one man ! 
How many battles won, and towns taken ! How 
many years compressed into one morning ; how 
many poor souls raised up and churches restored ! " 
To his master he wrote that it was a signal mercy, 
that without staining his hands he should have been 
avenged on his enemy. He had, however, better do 
nothing rashly. It was well to sleep a night on so 
great an event. 

The King of Navarre exulted in less seemly 
fashion. If, in addition to this good news, he might 
only hear that his wife had been strangled and that 
her mother was dead, then, he said, he would have 
every reason to sing the song of Simeon. 

Meantime, he followed the advice of Mornay and 
carried on the war with vigour, till he was suddenly 
attacked by a pleurisy so severe that his life was in 
danger. The Huguenots were in despair, valuing 
their leader more highly now that they feared he 
might be taken from them, and touched by the con- 
solation which he sought and found in the singing 
of psalms and edifying conversation. But the inac- 
tion to which he was reduced was not inconvenient. 
He was relieved from the necessity of taking any 
decided step before he could well judge what was 
likely to be the future course of events. 

Du Plessis-Mornay urged his master to hasten to 
the assistance of Henry III. Chatillon was equally 



1589] The Three Henries. 177 

eager to bring about a satisfactory understanding 
with the Royahsts. The sternest Huguenots could 
scarcely murmur at being called upon to help a 
prince so deeply stained with the blood of their 
brethren, when they saw the heir of the murdered 
Admiral sacrificing his resentment to the welfare of 
his country. The Protestants and the Royalists had 
the same interests and the same enemies. It was not, 
therefore, difBcult, when sentimental obstacles were 
laid aside, for them to come to an understanding. 
A truce was concluded for a year, during which the 
King of Navarre engaged to employ his forces 
"only by^ consent or command of His Majesty." 
Saumur, a strong fortress, commanding the passage 
of the Loire, and one town in each province were to 
be placed in the hands of the Reformers for the free 
exercise of their religion and as a pledge of the 
King's sincerity. 

Henry of Bourbon advanced to the banks of the 
Loire with a small but veteran army — 5,000 infantry, 
500 horse, and 500 musketeers. The good economy 
of Mornay had enabled him to pay his troops, and 
therefore to maintain a discipline which contrasted 
most favourably with the savage licence of the 
Leaguers. The Champions of Catholicism were not 
less terrible to the orthodox than to heretics. The 
churches were often the scene of their vilest ex- 
cesses. They derided the holiest mysteries of their 
faith, and trod under foot the consecrated Host, 
the Body, as they professed to believe, of their 
Redeemer. 

When the soldiers of Mayenne first saw the uni- 



I y^ Henry of Navarre. L1586- 

form of the Protestants among the ranks of their 
opponents, they shouted to them — ''Back, white 
scarves ; back, Chatillon ; it is not you who are our 
enemies, but the murderer of your father, the traitor 
King, who has betrayed you once and will betray 
you again ! " But Chatillon replied that they were 
rebels and traitors to their country, and that, when 
the service of his Prince and of the Commonwealth 
was concerned, he cast under foot all thought of 
private interest and wrong. 

When this was told to Henry III. he praised him, 
and ever after treated him with the greatest favour, 
and would, it was thought, had he lived, have ad- 
vanced him marvellously. So, at least, Chatillon 
himself believed, for he was grievously afflicted at 
the King's assassination, and said that he had lost 
his good master and all hope of prosperity in this 
world. His friends pointed out that after all Henry 
ni. had compassed his father's death, and that he 
might reasonably hope for more favour from Henry 
IV., to which he replied : " What you say is true. 
Yet be assured that the late King would have 
acknowledged and rewarded my services, while this 
one will rather abase me for serving him." 

The King of Navarre had once sworn that he 
would never again enter his brother-in-law's pres- 
ence, except between the ranks of his army. Yet, 
although warned that the King might offer his head 
as a pledge of reconciliation to the Catholics, he 
accepted an invitation to an interview in the park of 
Plessis les Tours. In the midst of a great and joy- 
ful crowd which had assembled to see the meeting 



15891 The Three Henries. 1 79 

of the Kings, Henry of Bourbon threw himself on 
his knees before Henry of Valois, who hastened to 
prevent him with repeated embraces. 

It was observed by the spectators that the King 
of France excelled in grace and dignity ; but the 
vivacity, the soldierly bearing and the genial frank- 
ness of the King of Navarre won the favour of the 
people. He was in appearance the perfect type of 
the well-born, hardy, adventurous and restless Gascon 
soldier of fortune ; but there was also something 
about him of a crafty Ulysses who had seen the cities 
and evil manners of many men. He was of small 
but active and wiry make, with strongly marked ex- 
pressive and mobile features, piercing eyes, equally 
ready to laugh, to frown or to weep, surrounded by 
careful and cunning wrinkles, and glancing from 
under highly arched ironical eyebrows ; the long sen- 
sual nose of Francis I., but less villainous and more 
aquiline, drooping over a pointed chin, his hair thick 
and curly though prematurely grey — bleached, he 
used to say, by the breath of adversity — his short 
beard hiding a closely shut mouth. His dress was a 
brown velvet doublet, worn on the shoulders by his 
breastplate ; he was only distinguished from his fol- 
lowers by his scarlet cloak and by the white plume 
fastened to his grey felt hat by a costly brooch. 
What more complete contrast could be imagined to 
the effeminate graces of the last Valois ? 

" The ice has been broken," Henry wrote to Mor- 
nay, '' in spite of many warnings that if I went I was 
a dead man. When I crossed the river I committed 
myself to God, who in His mercy has not only pre- 



i8o Henry of Navarre. [1585- 

served me, but caused the King to show extreme 
joy." "You have done, Sire," was the reply, ''what 
it was right for you to do, but what none should have 
ventured to advise you to do." 

The reconciliation of the King with the Protestants 
was far from displeasing to the Politicians and mod- 
erate Catholics. They gladly acquiesced in a policy 
which implied toleration, enmity to the League and 
a vigorous opposition to the patron and master of it, 
the King of Spain. The League in the meantime was 
daily becoming more hateful to a majority of the 
nation. At Paris it rested on the support of the 
lower classes, who were propitiated by an exemption 
from the obligation to pay their rent, — a communis- 
tic measure of confiscation odious to the middle class. 
In Normandy the Catholic leader, Brissac, had made 
common cause with an agrarian rising of the peas- 
antry, — a sure method of alienating the sympathies of 
the landowners. While all who were less Romanists 
and Guisards than Frenchmen were disgusted by the 
ever growing subservience to Philip IL The Spanish 
envoy Mendoza, whose insolence and love of intrigue 
had caused first Elizabeth and then Henry IIL to 
refuse to tolerate him at their Courts, enjoyed greater 
authority in the Council of the Union than Mayenne 
himself, who apologised humbly to the Escurial, on 
the plea of haste and urgency, for accepting the 
authority conferred upon him, without the previous 
permission of the King of Spain. 

The Royalists and the Protestants flocked to the 
army of the two Kings ; they were joined by a 
powerful body of Swiss, enlisted by the Protestant 



1589] 



The Three Henries. i8 



cantons, and were soon able to advance upon and 
threaten Paris. Nothing had been neglected which 
might arouse enthusiasm or coerce and crush any 
growing spirit of moderation among the citizens, — 
frantic and sanguinary sermons, processions of men, 
of women, of relics. Four thousand children were 
paraded through the streets with torches in their 
hands, singing the '' Dies Irae." As they halted 
before the churches they turned the torches to the 
ground, stamped on them with their feet and cried, 
'' Thus may God quench the House of Valois." 
Wonderful tales were told of the crimes and cruelty 
of the King, of his determination to glut his revenge 
on his rebeUious Capital. All who were suspected of 
being Royalists were imprisoned or watched with 
malevolent suspicion. The slightest symptom of dis- 
affection was punished by fine and imprisonment, 
frequently by death. A servant accused her mistress 
of having laughed on Ash Wednesday ; the charge 
was sufficient to endanger the life, not of the lady 
only, but of her whole family. Yet without large 
and immediate assistance from the Spaniards, Paris 
could not be held against the overwhelming forces 
of the kings of France and Navarre. The day for 
the assault was already fixed. The respectable citi- 
zens, disgusted by the licence of the mob, the ruin of 
trade and the prospect of famine, desired at least as 
much as they feared the entrance of the King. The 
monks, students and paupers, whatever their zeal, 
would be no match for the Swiss and for the veterans 
of Epernon and Navarre. 

But although the devotion of many to the Catho- 



1 82 Henry of Navarre. ri589 

lie cause had cooled, popular passion, as is often the 
case, became incarnate in an individual, entered into 
and took possession of him. 

Jacques Clement was a Burgundian monk, ignor- 
ant, violent and fanatical ; encouraged by his superiors 
he determined to strike down the murderer of the 
champion of the Church, the ally of heretics, the per- 
secutor of God's people. No means were neglected 
which might raise his enthusiasm to the highest pitch. 
He was introduced to the Duchess of Montpensier, 
perhaps to other leaders of the League, who promised 
him all that could tempt the ambition of a friar in 
this world and the next. 

He executed his purpose with the deliberate sim- 
plicity and success of a man too much in earnest, or 
too stupid, to be distracted by any apprehension of 
consequences to himself or others. 

The assassination of Henry HI. saved Paris. The 
Duchess of Montpensier fell on the neck of the mes- 
senger who brought her the tidings of the King's 
death ; the townspeople gave way to transports of 
unreasoning joy. The assassin was honoured as a 
saint and as a martyr, his image and those of the 
two Guises were placed on the altars of the churches 
and received the adoration of the faithful. 





CHAPTER V. 

CAN A HERETIC BE KING OF FRANCE? 
I 589-1 592. 

HE death of the last Valois, worthless 
man and weak King though he was, 
I appeared a most serious calamity to 
the few statesmen whose love for 
their country was not obscured by 
the spirit of faction or fanaticism. 
Three parties in the state had a clear conception 
of their own aims and were prepared to bestir them- 
selves to attain those aims. 

These were first the Romanist and Spanish party, 
composed of men who, sooner than that France 
should cease to be orthodox, were prepared to sacri- 
fice her national existence. 

Secondly, there was the faction of Lorraine, the 
Guises and their adherents devoted, under the pre- 
text of religion, to the aggrandisement of their 

House. 

And thirdly, the Huguenots who wished to over- 
throw the religious system hitherto accepted by the 

183 



184 Henry of Navarre, [1589- 

nation, or, at the least, to destroy the connection 
between Church and State. 

Besides these the many princes and nobles who 
sought only to advance their own personal fortunes, 
to become hereditary rulers in their governments, 
whether of province, town or castle, knew clearly 
what they wanted. Believing and even hoping, that 
the ship of the state was breaking up, each tried to 
possess himself of some fragment ; but these selfish 
wreckers can hardly be said to have had a policy. 
The great majority of the nation were indeed con- 
scious of the evils under which they were suffering, 
but stood hesitating and uncertain by what means 
they might be remedied. 

Henry of Bourbon was the lineal descendant of 
St. Lewis, but for ten generations none of his ances- 
tors in the male line had sat on the French throne. 
He was the champion and leader of a violent minor- 
ity ; if he, a heretic, was enabled by the swords of 
his Huguenots and by virtue of strict legitimist 
principles to establish his claim to the throne, this 
would be the triumph of one, and that the least 
popular, of the three existing constitutional theories. 

It was only a minority, chiefly composed of law- 
yers, who asserted that indefeasible hereditary right 
must, under all circumstances, determine the descent 
of the Crown. 

The principle of ultimate popular sovereignty, 
that the King derives his power, if not from election, 
at least from the consent of the people, historically 
true of the earlier Capetian monarchy, and never 
wholly forgotten, had been recently revived, mainly 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France? 185 

by the Huguenot writers. The greater part of the 
CathoHc clergy and many of the laity believed in the 
indissoluble connection of Church and State. In their 
eyes the title of the '' Very Christian King " de- 
pended on his coronation and unction with the 
miraculous oil at Rheims. It could hardly therefore 
be expected that the conservative and personal 
feeling which had attached the majority of the 
nobility and of the magistracy to Henry III. would 
be transferred to Henry IV. 

On hearing of the attempt on the King's life, 
Navarre had hurried from his quarters at Meudon 
to the bedside of Henry III. at St. Cloud. Holding 
his successor's hand the dying man had said to the 
nobles who were thronging the room, " I beg you 
as my friends, and command you as your King, to 
recognise my brother here after my death." Upon 
which all present had with many protestations 
pledged their faith to Henry of Bourbon. 

But all was changed when sixteen hours later he 
again came to the royal quarters. He was received 
as their hege lord by the officers of the household, 
but in the chamber of death he found the corpse 
watched by two friars and many courtiers, who, after 
a scanty salute, gathered in knots with scowling 
faces and angry gestures, loudly protesting to each 
other that they would rather die a hundred deaths 
than serve a heretic master. 

D'O, a man of the vilest reputation, who, by the 
ignominy of a " mignon " and the arts of a swindler, 
had earned the office of minister of finance, whose 
shameless prodigality was supported by an insatiable 



1 86 ' Henry of Navarre. L1589- 

rapacity, had the effrontery to present himself before 
Henry, as the spokesman of those whose tender con- 
science would not allow them to acknowledge an 
unorthodox Prince. If he would at once abjure 
his heresy and engage not to confer office on any 
Huguenot, then they were prepared to be his obedi- 
ent subjects. 

But Henry, who had found time to consult some 
of his most trusted advisers, though paling with 
anger, restrained his indignation and returned a 
politic as well as spirited answer. "Would they 
take him by the throat in the first moment of his 
accession, and forgetting the oath which they had 
sworn but a few hours before to their murdered 
master, seek to compel him to a compliance which 
so many simple folk had been able to refuse, because 
they knew how to die? Who but a man entirely 
without religion would change his faith in such 
fashion? Would they prefer an atheist for King? 
or to be led on the day of battle by a man without 
any fear of God ? He was ready — as he had always 
been — to receive instruction from a council of the 
Church, and meantime would refuse no reasonable 
pledges to the Catholics ; although his past treat- 
ment of them was the best guarantee for the future." 

He had scarcely spoken when Givry, one of the 
most gallant of the late King's officers, who had 
been sent to sound the disposition and to secure the 
adhesion of the camp, came in and clasping the 
King's knee, said '' in his pleasant way, " " I have 
seen. Sire, the flower of your brave gentry. They 
are impatiently awaiting your commands. You are 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France? 187 

the King of all brave men — none but cowards will 
desert you." 

Almost at the same moment Sancy introduced the 
forty captains of the Swiss companies who had come 
to kiss the King's hand and to offer their services. 
Sancy was renowned as a skilful diplomatist, but he 
had never given a more striking proof of his abihty, 
nor one more useful to his country than by now per- 
suading these mercenaries so far to abandon their 
native prudence as to promise to serve the King of 
France three months on credit. Henry embraced 
him and grasped the hands of the Swiss leaders ; to 
them, he said, he should owe his throne. 

The Marshal Biron, who of all the Royalist cap- 
tains had the greatest military reputation and most 
authority with the army, reproached Sancy for his 
too great zeal. '' I thought you," he said, '' a wise 
man, but you are doing your best to spoil a good 
opportunity of making our fortunes." But the 
promise of the county of Perigord and of other 
bribes to his insatiable greed and vanity, induced 
Biron not only to undertake to serve the King him- 
self, but also to act as a mediator between him and 
the malcontents. 

The result of this negotiation was that, ten days 
later (August 4th), Henry signed a declaration in 
which he solemnly undertook to maintain free from 
all innovations the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman 
faith, to submit himself to the instruction of a 
general or national council within six months if 
possible, to deprive none of the dignities and offices 
they had held under the late. King, to appoint no 



1 88 Henry of Navarre, [1589- 

Protestants during the next six months to any vacant 
dignity or office and to grant to the Huguenots no 
privileges of worship or other advantages to which 
they were not already entitled by the treaties and 
edicts of Henry HI. In return for these conces- 
sions, the majority of the Catholic nobles consented 
to recognise him as their King. 

Yet the royal army began to melt away. Epernon 
left the camp with 7,000 men ; he professed that he 
could do the King better service in his governments 
of Saintonge and Angoumois. His intention was 
to watch the turn of events, and if the opportunity 
offered, to establish himself as an independent ruler. 
Many other nobles followed his example. 

It was perhaps the hope that he might succeed the 
King of Navarre in the protectorate of the Churches 
which made the Duke of Thouars (la Tremoille) 
hurry back to his fiefs in the Protestant districts of 
the South-west. The Gascon and Poitevin Hugue- 
nots who followed him might with more reason ex- 
cuse their departure by the state of destitution in 
which they found themselves. 

Soon the royal army was reduced to half its 
numbers, while that of the League was constantly 
strengthened by the arrival of Spanish or native 
reinforcements. To persist in remaining before 
Paris was to invite disaster, yet the retreat of the 
King appeared a confession of weakness and encour- 
aged the impression that he would be no match for 
his opponents. The League not only held Paris 
but most of the great towns. They already out- 
numbered the King in the field, and would soon be 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France f 1 89 

joined by the mercenaries who were being levied 
with Spanish and Papal money in Germany, and if 
these did not suffice, Philip II. promised the sup- 
port of Parma's invincible veterans. Henry IV., on 
the other hand, was penniless, even his Huguenots 
were beginning to desert him, and it was believed 
that he must either retire south of the Loire, or be 
driven to seek a refuge at the court of his ally the 
Queen of England. 

But in truth the strength of the League was more 
apparent than real. That it became more and more 
subservient to Philip II., more and more dependent 
on Spanish money and Spanish soldiers, was at once 
a proof and a cause of its weakness. Why, if it was 
so strong and popular, was it compelled to rely on 
foreign support ? Villeroy, an able statesman, though 
timid to the verge of dishonesty, and who, dismissed 
from office by Henry III., had joined Mayenne, 
wrote, '' We must render to the King of Spain the 
credit and the gratitude due for our existence." 
But it was the conviction that they could only main- 
tain themselves by Spanish help which made him, 
and all the less fanatical and reckless among his party, 
anxious to come to terms with the legitimate heir 
to the crown, and opponents of the extreme courses 
which made a future reconciliation more difficult. 
Nor was there any agreement on other points among 
even those who were unanimous in inveterate hos- 
tility to Henry of Bourbon. The spurious ultramon- 
tane democracy of the great towns was eager only 
to secure the re-establishment of Catholic orthodoxy 
and a large measure of local independence. The 



190 Henry of Navarre. [158$- 

leaders of this party, who revered in Phihp II. the 
champion and temporal head of Romanism and the 
dispenser of tiie treasures of the New World, would 
willingly have thrown the Salic law overboard, and at 
once have recognised the Infanta Clara Eugenia 
(Isabella), the granddaughter of Henry II., as their 
Queen. When we condemn this subservience to 
Spain, it is only fair to remember that Artois, 
Franche Comte and other French-speaking prov- 
inces among the dominions of the Spanish King, en- 
joyed a large measure of provincial independence 
and did not feel their nationality to be endangered. 
But the pretensions of Philip II. were odious to the 
Guises and to the few great nobles who had joined 
their faction. The personal government of the Es- 
curial would not be compatible with the feudal 
independence which it was hoped to re-establish, 
nor was the House of Lorraine struggling to snatch 
the Crown from the Bourbons in order that they 
might place it on the head of the Hapsburgs. 

The Guises themselves were not united. The Duke 
of Mayenne was jealous of the rising popularity of 
his nephew, the young Duke of Guise. He could 
scarcely venture to hope for the Crown himself, and 
apparently did not see how any settlement satisfac- 
tory to his ambition could as yet be brought about ; 
he was therefore content that matters should drift on, 
his only policy was to prevent, so far as in him lay, 
every definite solution, in the hope of profiting by 
any, as yet, unforeseen chance. 

The wholly selfish and unpatriotic aims of the 
leader of the League were not compensated by any 



16$2] Can a Heretic be King of France? 19I 



exceptional ability, by any special aptitude for the 
part he was called upon to play. That Mayenne 
should have been praised, even by Protestant his- 
torians, for probity and humanity, that he should 
evidently have been regarded as a Prince of more 
than average virtue, is most damning testimony 
against the age in which he lived. He was suspected 
of more than one murder, not to mention the assas- 
sination with his own sword of a soldier of fortune 
who had dared to aspire to the hand of his step- 
daughter. He was cautious and prudent both in 
policy and in war, but these respectable qualities pre- 
vented him from venturing to seize the object of his 
ambition when it was perhaps not beyond the reach 
of audacity, and did not fit him to cope with the 
restless and daring energy of his opponent. 

It was also fortunate for Henry IV. that being 
unable to agree in the settlement of the succession, 
his opponents sought to postpone the difficulty by 
proclaiming the old Cardinal of Bourbon King. By 
so doing they recognised the legitimacy of the claim 
of his family to the throne and set up as the rival of 
the undoubted head of the house an old man, nearly 
imbecile, of whom, even in his youth, Calvin had said 
that unless quickened with wine he was more lumpish 
than a log, and that he might well be mistaken for a 
wineskin or a cask, so little had he of the semblance 
of a human being ; — an old man, moreover, who, at 
this juncture, was a prisoner in the hands of his 
nephew. 

Although the League held the Capital and many 
of the most important towns, it may be doubted 



192 Henry of Navarre. Li 589- 

whether it anywhere commanded the hearty alle- 
giance of a majority. In Paris we are assured a 
violent minority terrorised the loyal and law-abiding 
citizens by means of foreign mercenaries and of the 
rabble, hired by the doles of the convents and the 
bribes of Spain. 

But if his opponents were so weak, how came it 
that so long and doubtful a struggle had still to be 
waged before the authority of Henry IV. was univer- 
sally acknowledged ? The King's difficulties were, 
we shall find, due not so much to the strength or 
statecraft of his native opponents as to the interven- 
tion of Spain and to the want of loyalty and unanim- 
ity among his own partisans, and perhaps also to the 
misery and exhaustion of the nation, so reduced by 
suffering that it lacked the strength and spirit needed 
for the vigorous effort by which alone it could throw 
off the maladies under which it was perishing. 

The body politic appeared to have reached the last 
stage of dissolution, and it profited but little that 
there should now be a vigorous will at the centre of 
the government, when all the departments of state, 
the nerves, so to speak, by which that will might 
have set the limbs in motion, were paralysed or dis- 
ordered, and those limbs themselves wasted and 
powerless through misery and privation ; when the 
supplies which are as necessary to the political, as 
food is to the physical organism, were either not to 
be obtained, or if obtained were diverted from their 
natural and wholesome uses, further to inflame the 
peccant humours. 

'' France," says a contemporary poem, '' is like a 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France? 193 

storm-tossed vessel surrounded by reefs and breakers, 
whose crew have deserted the care of sails and helm 
to turn their guns upon each other. Conquerors or 
conquered, the most they can hope is to be the last to 
perish in the universal wreck. Her cities are full of 
injustice and violence ; the just judge is dragged be- 
fore the judgment seat of the criminal. Yet those 
who in walled towns snatch, arms in hand, a pre- 
carious sleep are happy compared with the miserable 
country folk. All that the earth can do for those 
who taught the streams to water her green fields and 
enamel them with flowers, who decked her with 
golden harvest and purple vintage, is to offer them the 
shelter of her forests, the covert of the boar and the 
lair of the wolf. There perhaps they may escape the 
soldiers, who to compel them to disclose their poor 
hoards, their only resource against starvation, sus- 
pend them by their thumbs with cutting cords, or 
scorch their greased and naked bodies with burning 
brands, or hang by the feet their children, torn from 
the breast. . . . Man is no longer a man when he 
feeds on grass and roots, on raw flesh and carrion, 
when the starving children gnaw the bark of the 
forests, while the village streets are the abode of 
wolves and foxes, the houses, without furniture, doors 
or windows, bearing mute witness to the crimes that 
they have seen." This might perhaps be thought 
poetic rhetoric, but the sober lawyer, L'Estoile, is 
not less emphatic. '' In this month the people almost 
throughout France were dying of famine and went in 
bands cutting and eating the unripe ears of corn." 
*' In this month companies of robbers went through 



194 Henry of Navarre, [1589- 

the land robbing and plundering the houses of gentry 
and labourers of all they contained." Such are the 
constant entries in his diary. So also Villeroy com- 
plains that the towns which were rich before the Civil 
Wars had now become desolate and poor; that there 
was no longer any justice ; the magistrates being no 
longer paid, lived in constant apprehension and 
misery. That all cities, and Paris more than any, 
were full of fear and discontent, confusion, faction 
and poverty ; while if the towns were wretched no 
words could describe the misery of the open country, 
the villages deserted, the fields fallow, the face of the 
earth hideous and deformed. 

No wonder that the peasantry were beginning to 
join together in armed bands, for those who had 
been robbed of all could still fashion some rude 
weapons formidable in the hands of despair, and 
that gentry and nobles dreaded a revival of the 
Jacqueries of the Hundred Years' War. 

Such, however, was the state of things which many 
among the King's followers were anxious to perpetu- 
ate. So long as the war lasted and his authority was 
disputed, they believed that they could extort a high 
price for their services and immunity for their crimes 
and extortions. 

So much was clear, that the rule of Henry of 
Bourbon would be a very different thing from that 
of the last Valois, — that it would at least be a real- 
ity. It Avas therefore dreaded by all those who had 
usurped or who still hoped to usurp an authority 
which did not belong to them, by all those who prof- 
ited by abuses and irregularities which a strong gov- 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France? 195 



ernment was certain to check, and there were many 
such among the nominal adherents of the King. 

Nevertheless there can be little doubt that, with- 
out Spanish intervention, Henry IV. would before 
long have overcome the obstacles raised by the open 
hostility of the League, and by the treacherous 
jealousy and ill-will of his own followers. Yet that 
intervention, although it protracted the struggle in 
France, is not to be regretted by Europe. It diverted 
from the Low Countries the treasures and the men 
which might have enabled Parma to complete the 
subjugation of the Dutch. The Spanish invasion of 
France in 1 590 postponed for two years Henry IV's 
entry into his capital, but it gave Maurice of Orange 
an opportunity and a sorely needed breathing space. 

Breaking up his camp before Paris the King sent 
the levies of Picardy under the command of the 
Duke of Longueville, and accompanied by 3,000 
Swiss, back to their province, and the Marshal d'Au- 
mont to Champagne with the same number of Swiss 
and the gentry of that district ; while he himself 
with the rest of his forces, — some 10,500 men — 
marched into Normandy. 

He wished to prevent the Leaguers from drawing 
money and supplies from the wealthiest province of 
France, to confirm the loyalty of the well-disposed 
nobility and governors, to determine those who were 
wavering and by threatening Rouen to divert 
Mayenne from attacking the Royalist garrisons 
round Paris. A third motive was the necessity of 
securing a port, conveniently situated, for keeping 
up communications with England. Elizabeth had 



196 Henry of Navarre. [1589- 

at first demanded a promise to cede Calais as the 
price of effective help, but Henry IV., at the time 
of his utmost necessity, and when his opponents 
were bribing the King of Spain and the Duke of 
Savoy by hopes of the partition of France, refused 
to cede an inch of French territory, and the English 
Queen, with more than usual generosity, had with- 
out further huckstering promised ample assistance 
of supplies and men. 

Many of the Norman towns opened their gates at 
the King's approach, others he occupied by force. 
The governor of Dieppe had been among the first to 
recognise the King's authority. (August 6, 1589.) 

Dieppe was the wealthiest and most prosperous 
of the Norman ports. The tidal harbour was safe 
and convenient for the largest ships which at that 
time navigated the Channel. The population of the 
town, composed for the most part of wealthy traders, 
and of hardy fishermen and sailors, well trained in 
the use of arms, was more numerous than that 
which now brings home the cod of Newfoundland 
and the herrings of the North Sea, or ministers to 
the wants of a fashionable crowd of summer visitors. 

Of the twenty-five or thirty thousand inhabitants 
a large proportion were Protestants : while the Catho- 
lics among the rich merchants and other leading meYi 
were like their governor determined enemies of the 
League, The Spaniard was the natural enemy and 
prey of the seafaring population on both sides of 
the Channel. The fortifications of Dieppe were 
strong and in good repair, well supplied with artil- 
lery and defended by a garrison — including the 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France? 197 

local militia, — 6,000 strong, all well drilled and 
equipped by the care of the governor and the liber- 
ality of the townsmen. 

Towards the end of August the King with a small 
escort rode from his camp at Darnetal, three miles 
from Rouen, to Dieppe. The inhabitants received 
him with enthusiastic loyalty, but he cut short the 
laboured discourses of the magistrates : *' No cere- 
mony, my children ; I only want your love, good 
wine, good bread and friendly faces." 

Two days sufficed to confirm the zeal of the citi- 
zens, to inspect the fortifications and to learn the 
military capabilities of the neighbourhood. Scarcely 
was the King back at Darnetal when the news came 
that Mayenne was on the march from Paris. Eight 
hundred thousand gold crowns sent by Philip II., 
and the contributions, voluntary or forced, of the 
richer citizens had enabled him to collect a formida- 
ble army of 25,000 foot and 8,000 horse. 

He boasted that he would soon bring back *' M. 
de Beam," ''the Gascon heretic," or drive him into 
the sea, and the more fervent and credulous of his 
partisans already began to hire windows from which 
to view his triumphal entry into the Capital. 

It would have been madness for the King with his 
small army to have awaited the attack of his oppo- 
nent at Darnetal, with the great and hostile town of 
Rouen in his rear. He- therefore fell back upon 
Dieppe, where he could face his enemies and await 
the English, Scotch and Dutch succours and the 
approach of the other divisions of his army under 
Longueville and D'Aumont. The position he had 



198 Henry of Navarre, [1589- 

chosen, five miles from Dieppe, was defended by 
three little rivers, by woods and marshes and rested 
upon the village and castle of Arques. The zeal of 
the inhabitants of Dieppe, who turned out to work, 
men, women and children, enabled the King to 
strengthen his line by earthworks and by an en- 
trenched camp, commanding the main road to 
Dieppe. The slow and cautious approach of May- 
enne gave Henry full time to make every preparation 
that prudence could suggest. There was nothing to 
which he did not himself attend ; his indefatigable 
activity was a marvel to all — even to himself. *' It 
is a wonder that I am alive," he wrote to Mme. de 
Grammont, '' I am so hard worked ; but I manage 
to keep well, and my affairs prosper better than 
some folk expected. ... I hope, with God's 
help, that if they attack me they will find that they 
have made a bad venture." This was written on 
September 7th ; on the 13th Mayenne was in front of 
the royal lines; on the i6th he attacked the suburb 
of Le Pollet, which he hoped to carry without much 
difficulty and the possession of which would have 
given him the command of the harbour and prevented 
the English reinforcements from reaching the King. 
But meeting with an obstinate resistance, both there 
and at Arques, where he had attempted a diversion, 
he drew off his troops and, after the next day had 
been spent in sallies and skirmishes, determined to 
mass his men for a decisive attack on the entrenched 
camp and other works defending the direct approach 
to Dieppe. 

Three days were spent in preparations. Early on 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France ? 199 

the morning of September 21st (about 5 or 6 A.M.), 
the Leaguers silently advanced to the attack under 
the cover of a thick autumnal fog, which not only 
concealed their approach, but also, when the attack 
had begun, prevented the King from using his artil- 
lery. Yet the Cathohcs were unable to make any 
impression on the Royahst position, till their German 
mercenaries cried out that they too were Protestants 
and wished to surrender, upon which their country- 
men and the Swiss in the royal service held out their 
hands and the butt end of their lances to help them 
over ditch and rampart. These lansquenets at first 
obeyed the orders of the King's oflficers to draw up 
apart, but when some of the Leaguers appeared to 
be about to force the entrenchments, then, either 
from premeditated treachery, or because they wished 
to earn their pardon from those whom they now 
believed to be the victors, they suddenly turned upon 
the Royalists. For a time it appeared as if Henry 
IV. must fall back. The treachery of the Germans 
had driven him from his first line. He had charged 
ten times at the head of his division, and two horses 
had been killed under him, but neither his own exer- 
tions nor those scarcely less determined of his fol- 
lowers would have been able to keep in check the 
heavy masses of Mayenne's mail-clad horse and the 
serried columns of his Swiss and German infantry, 
had not the sun at the most critical moment scat- 
tered the fog, so that the guns of the Castle of 
Arques began to play upon the advancing Leaguers, 
while at the same moment Chatillon appeared lead- 
ing the Huguenot garrison of Le PoUet. " Here we 



200 Henry of Navarre. [1589- 

are, Sire," their commander shouted as they passed 
the King, " ready to die with you," while his men 
broke into that fierce chant, " Let God arise," which 
on so many fields from the Danube to the Boyne has 
struck dismay into the hearts of the enemies of Prot- 
estantism. The Leaguers were driven from the posi- 
tions they had won, and Mayenne fell sullenly back. 

Long after Aubigne asked the Captain-General of 
the League to what cause he should ascribe his de- 
feat at Arques. After a moment's pause the Duke 
replied : " Write that it was due to the valour of the 
old Huguenot phalanx, composed of men, who, from 
father to son, were hail fellow well met with death." 

The army of the League had only lost from 600 
to 400 men, and Mayenne was able, five days after- 
wards, to march round the King's position and occu- 
py a height from which he could bombard the town 
of Dieppe. But EngHsh vessels had already run 
into the harbour, bringing ammunition and supplies. 
On September 29th, 1,200 Scotch landed, and three 
days later Elizabeth's fleet disembarked 4,000 men. 
Henry IV. dined on the Admiral's ship, and the 
besiegers might hear the salvos of ordnance, while 
kettle-drum and trumpet brayed out the triumph of 
the toasts he pledged. 

The armies of Longueville, D'Aumont and La 
Noue were collecting in the rear of Mayenne, his 
supplies were intercepted by the King's garrisons, 
his army was melting away — the day after the en- 
gagement at Arques 3,000 men, mostly Parisian 
mihtia, left his camp. The trainbands of the towns, 
like the noble volunteers, only conceived themselves 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France? 201 

bound to serve during their good pleasure. Since 
the arrival of the English reinforcements, whatever 
chance there might have been of reducing Dieppe 
was gone. The General of the League, therefore, 
broke up his camp and retreated, glad that the ne- 
cessity of obtaining help from the Spaniards gave 
him a pretext for hurrying to Amiens and spared 
him the mortification of returning baffled and de- 
feated to Paris. 

Shortly before the attack on Arques the Count of 
Belin, a Leaguist officer, had been taken prisoner 
and was received by the King with the courtesy and 
caresses by which he generally sought to disarm and 
win his opponents ; he was a very spaniel, his old 
followers grumbled, whom you must beat if you 
would have him fawn upon you. Belin in return for 
the King's civilities said that from what he saw of 
the strength of his Majesty's forces he feared that 
he would not be able to resist the great army about 
to attack him. "You forget, M. de Belin," was the 
reply, " that part of my strength which you do not 
see — the help of God and my good cause." The re- 
pulse of the army of the League opened the eyes of 
many to what M. de Belin had been unable to see. 
It appeared likely enough that Heaven would help 
one so indefatigable and brave in helping himself. 
And it was seen that on earth, too, he had allies ;— 
the ships and soldiers of the Queen of England, 
fresh from the defeat of the Invincible Armada, the 
treasures of the Dutch who thought their money 
not ill spent if it should aid in diverting Parma to 
France. " Arques," said a young prince who fought 



202 Henry of Navarre. [1589- 

in the Royalist ranks, '^ was the gate through which 
the King entered upon the path of his glory and 
prosperity." 

That Europe thought so too was shown by the 
action of the Venetian Senate. That prudent oli- 
garchy, in spite of the protests and threats of the 
Spanish ambassador and of the papal legate, deter- 
mined to recognise Henry IV. and to send an 
embassy to his Court. That these wise statesmen, so 
careful to trim the sails of their shattered bark to the 
wind of success, should thus show that they believed 
the future to be on his side, was an omen of sad im- 
port to the French King's enemies and greatly raised 
the hopes of his friends. 

The first use made by Henry IV. of his victory 
was to let it be understood that he was prepared to 
grant the most liberal terms to Mayenne, not, he 
said, that he feared him, but that his heart bled for 
the sufferings of his people. The Lieutenant-Gen- 
eral of the League, deaf to the arguments of Villeroy 
and of the most honest among his advisers, rejected 
all overtures. 

After uniting his forces with those of his generals 
the King advanced upon Paris with an army of 
20,000 men. Slowly at first, hoping that Mayenne 
would hurry to the defence of the Capital and give 
him the opportunity of winning a pitched battle. 
Then, finding that his opponent did not accept the 
challenge and encouraged by messages from his par- 
tisans within the walls, by forced marches. Before 
daybreak on November ist, and in a thick fog, his 
columns carried by assault in three places the sub- 



15921 Can a Heretic be King of France? 203 

urbs on the right bank of the Seine and all but 
succeeded in entering the city itself pell-mell with 
the fugitives they were driving before them. It 
was perhaps well for the Royalists that they did 
not succeed in penetrating into the town, where they 
might have been lost and overwhelmed in the 
labyrinth of narrow and barricaded streets. 

The suburb of St.-Germain was sacked, and it is 
said that the slaughter of the Parisians by Chatillon's 
men to the cry of '' Remember St. Bartholomew ! " 
greatly impaired for a time the popularity of the 
King's cause in Paris. Yet the churches were 
respected, no violence was offered to women, nor 
were any victims slain in cold blood. Meantime 
the Duke, hearing that Paris was in danger, had 
left Amiens and was advancing with all possible 
speed. He entered the town two days after the 
attack on the suburbs. Henry, after drawing up 
his troops and offering battle in the plain of Mont- 
rouge retired slowly towards the Loire, reaching 
Tours on November 21st. 

Through the province of Maine, which submitted 
after the surrender of the Capital, Le Mans and 
Brittany, where he was welcomed by the Parliament 
of Rennes and by a loyal minority among the nobles, 
the King marched into Normandy and in less than a 
month had reduced to obedience all the important 
towns and fortresses, with the exception of Rouen, 
Havre and Avranches. 

His necessities compelled him to levy contributions, 
but all plunder and licence were severely punished ; 
he showed the most scrupulous respect for the 



204 Henry of Navarre. [1589- 

churches, and received all who submitted with the 
most gracious courtesy. A harmless sarcasm was the 
worst they needed to fear. When the magistrates of 
a town which had only opened its gates after it had 
been played upon by the royal batteries assured him 
in a set harangue of that loyalty which was his by 
divine and civil law, he corrected them with a smile : 
''Cannon law you mean, gentlemen." 

Meantime Mayenne was playing a difficult game 
with considerable skill in Paris. Philip IPs envoys, 
Tassis and Mendoza, urged that their master should 
be proclaimed ''Protector of the Kingdom"; if he 
was, he would pay the cost of the war. The taxes of 
France should be devoted to paying her debts, and 
Frenchmen should share the trade and wealth of the 
New World with the subjects of his Catholic Majesty. 
After the death of the Cardinal of Bourbon, the suc- 
cession might be settled on some French prince with 
the hand of the Infanta Isabella ; — offers, tempting 
in themselves, but as little agreeing with Mayenne's 
ambition as with the patriotism of those of his 
advisers who had not forgotten that they were 
Frenchmen. The authority of the Lieutenant-Gen- 
eral of the Union would pale before that of the Pro- 
tector of the Kingdom, and since the Duke was 
married he could not hope to be the Prince favoured 
with the hand of the Infanta ; while the sounder part 
of the Catholic party, men who, believing in the in- 
timate connection of Galilean Church and State, felt 
unable to recognise an enemy of that Church as the 
Most Christian King, were far from wishing to see 
their country the tributary of Spain. 



15921 Can a Heretic be King of France ? 205 

As a temporary compromise all were willing to 
recognise the Cardinal of Bourbon. It was known 
that he cotild not live long, and meanwhile the Span- 
iards trusted to be able, with the help of the Jesuits 
and their other allies in the confessional and the pul- 
pit, by large bribes and still larger promises, to pre- 
pare public opinion for the succession of the Infanta. 
The more patriotic Leaguers, statesmen such as Ville- 
roy and Jeannin, hoped that time would be gained 
for the conversion of Henry of Navarre, or, if he 
proved obdurate, for securing the accession of some 
Catholic prince of the House of Bourbon ; while 
Mayenne, too cautious to attempt to seize the Crown 
himself, could not hope to have more power than 
while carrying on the government in the name of an 
old man, a prisoner in the hands of his opponents. 
Charles of Bourbon was accordingly proclaimed 
King, and his supporters pledged themselves to 
labour for his release and coronation at Rheims. 

After this, on the ground that the large powers 
which it claimed to exercise were inconsistent with 
the authority of a legitimate and orthodox monarch, 
Mayenne no longer summoned or consulted the 
" Council General of the Union," but appointed a 
Council of State attached to his person, composed in 
part of the more important members of the Council 
General, in part of Secretaries of State nominated by 
himself. This was a revolution in the constitution 
of the League. The Council General had been 
largely representative and democratic — the Council 
of State was the mere instrument of Mayenne's 
personal government. 



2o6 Henry of Navarre. [1589- 

But while the Spaniards, Guisards, PoHticians and 
Fanatics were intriguing against each other at Paris, 
the King was extending his conquests. Meulanhad 
been reHeved, Poissy taken, and now he was threat- 
ening Dreux. The possession of the towns on the 
Seine enabled the Royalists to prevent the supplies 
of Normandy reaching the Capital. If Dreux fell, 
the rich crops of the fertile plain of the Beauce 
would also be lost. Already the pressure of want 
was felt. Mayenne, who had been joined by 2,000 
Spanish and Walloon men-at-arms under the com- 
mand of the Count of Egmont, and by some German 
foot in the pay of Spain marched to the relief of 
Dreux. The King, whose army was very inferior in 
numbers, was compelled to raise the siege, and 
Mayenne, having attained his object, would have 
fallen back without offering battle, had he not 
yielded to the representations of his officers. They 
pointed out to him the superiority of his army to 
that of the King; the Count of Egmont, zealous in 
the service of his father's murderers, protested that 
his mailed lancers would ride down the lightly armed 
cavalry of the King. More trusted advisers whis- 
pered to the Duke that the general of a victorious 
army might boldly demand the Crown from the 
representatives of the nation. If he could hope to 
meet them on anything like equal terms Henry IV. 
was not the man to baulk his opponents of their 
wish to fight a pitched battle. During the two days 
which intervened between March 12th, the day on 
which he broke up his leaguer before Dreux, and 
March 14th, that on which the battle of Ivry was 



1592] Ca7i a Heretic be King of France? 207 

fought, his army was considerably increased by 
reinforcements from Normandy and Picardy and 
even from Champagne and the banks of the Loire. 
Though impatient of a protracted campaign, the 
French gentry scented a battle from afar, and eager 
for the fray hastened to swell the King's ranks. But 
even so, he was greatly outnumbered, and could 
oppose only 2,200 cavalry and 8,000 infantry to 
Mayenne's 4,000 veteran horse and 12,000 foot. 

Du Plessis-Mornay, always first where he could 
serve his master with pen or sword, reached the field 
in time to charge in the first line of the King's 
division, composed almost entirely of men of birth 
and quality, but after the day was won he exclaimed : 
'* You have, Sire, committed the bravest folly that 
ever was, in staking the fate of a kingdom on one 
cast of the dice." 

Yet Henry IV. had been careful to leave as little 
as possible to chance. Nothing was omitted which 
might enable his men to enter the battle with stout 
hearts and vigorous bodies. The March night was 
stormy and cold, but most of the royal troops were 
lodged in the villages on the fringe of the plain of 
Ivry, and large fires, tents and shelter were provided 
for those who were compelled to encamp in the 
open. A plentiful supply of wine and provisions 
was distributed to all. The King himself visited 
their quarters with such words to officers and men 
as were likely to raise their enthusiasm to the highest 
pitch. The Count of Schomberg, the Colonel of the 
German mercenaries, asking on the previous day for 
the arrears of pay due to his men, had received a curt 



2o8 Henry of Navarre, [1589- 



reply : '' Men of honour did not ask for money on 
the day before a battle." Now Henry sought him 
out: " M. de Schomberg, I insulted you. This may 
be the last day of my life and I would not wrong 
the honour of a gentleman. Pardon me, and em- 
brace me." "Sir," replied the German, "yester- 
day, it is true, your Majesty wounded me — ^but 
to-day you kill me ; for the honour you do me 
obliges me to lay down my life in your service." 
Schomberg kept his word ; obtaining permission to 
leave his command and to charge with the King's 
division, he forced his way into the densest ranks of 
the enemy and fell fighting valorously. 

The King protested to his followers that he fought 
not for personal aggrandisement, but in the hope of 
restoring peace and unity to his unhappy country, 
and that it was his earnest prayer his life might not 
be preserved, unless it was for his people's good ; 
and since he passed much of the night in private 
devotions it would be unjust to question his sin- 
cerity. The edifying example of their leader was 
followed by the royal army. The village churches 
were full of Catholic Royalists hearing Mass and 
confessing ; while the Protestants sang their psalms 
and listened to the exhortations of ministers not less 
valiant than pious. 

The zeal of the Swiss was stimulated by means 
more congenial to the practical genius of their nation ; 
40,000 crowns which the economy of Mornay had 
provided were distributed among them. 

The King threw himself down to rest for a couple 
of hours, but before daybreak, was again astir, visit- 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France? 209 

ing his men, explaining his simple plan of battle to 
the officers and raising the spirits of all by his 
cheerful confidence. In an army of barely 10,000 
men, all could hear the words, could at least see the 
countenance and be brought under the personal in- 
fluence of their commander. 

Henry's tactics were much the same as at Coutras. 
He supported each division of cavalry by infantry on 
both flanks ; and drew up his horse in deep masses, 
so that they might be able to force their way through 
the gaps made by the musketry in the enemies' 
hedge of lances. Mayenne also placed his regiments 
of infantry in the intervals of his cavalry, and drew 
up his forces in the same order as those of the King, 
except that as his army was much the more numerous 
his line was in the form of a crescent. The Duke 
himself, with his best men-at-arms, placed himself 
with Egmont and his Flemish horse in the centre 
opposite the King. After the rebels had formed 
their line of battle they halted, and the King took 
advantage of their hesitation to alter by a skilful 
manoeuvre the position of his men, so that they 
should not advance with the sun and dust in their 
eyes. 

The engagement began by nine volleys fired with 
great effect by the King's cannon — some six pieces, 
— a respectable field battery in those days. But 
although Marshal d'Aumont drove the light cavalry 
of the League headlong from the field, fortune did not 
at first appear disposed to favour the Royalists. The 
German Reiters and the Walloons broke the lighter 
French horse, who in vain attempted to protect the 



2IO Henry of Navarre. ti589- 

artillery. The Duke of Montpensier on the King's 
left was driven back by the Duke of Nemours ; and 
the advance of Biron's division, which had been 
stationed somewhat farther back than the rest of 
the line, barely saved D'Aumont's cavalry from 
being overwhelmed by their numerous assailants. 
France, said an eye-witness, appeared to be on the 
very verge of ruin. 

Henry IV. saw that the decisive moment was 
come, and himself prepared to lead his choicest 
troops in the supreme and desperate struggle. As his 
helmet, conspicuous by a vast plume of white pea- 
cock feathers, was placed on his head, he cried : 
" Comrades, God is on our side. There are his ene- 
mies and ours, and here is your King. Should your 
standards fall, rally round my white plume ; you 
will find it on the path of victory and honour ! " 

Mayenne's horsemen outnumbered those of the 
King by three to one, but fortunately at the mo- 
ment of Henry's attack his opponents had been 
thrown into confusion by the German Reiters, who 
after their charge had fallen back, as their custom 
was, to re-form behind their own line. Sufficient 
space for this manoeuvre ought to have been left 
between the corps supporting them. But the 
Leaguist officer, on whom the duty devolved of see- 
ing that the different bodies of troops took up the 
positions assigned to them, was shortsighted, and 
had placed them too closely together ; and this mis- 
take was the more serious, because, arranged as they 
were in a crescent, they converged in advancing 
upon the enemy. The Reiters finding no space left, 



1592] Can a Heretic he King of France? 21 1 

tried to force their way through Mayenne's and Eg- 
mont's ranks, threw them into disorder and checked 
their advance, so that the King was among them 
before they could get into a charge or use their 
lances with effect. Yet the contest was fierce and 
for a time uncertain. Though Henry amply justified 
by his intrepid valour what else had seemed a bom- 
bastic vaunt, plunging into the enemies' ranks two 
horse-lengths ahead of his followers, nor resting till 
his sword was beaten out of shape, his arm spent 
and swollen with changing blows, some of his men 
had fallen back, thrown into confusion by a volley 
poured into them at twenty-five yards by Mayenne's 
musketeers. But the greater number pressed on, 
fired by their King's example and emulating his 
courage. The Count of Egmont fell and his Wal- 
loons took to flight. Mayenne and Nemours seeing 
their horse give way hurried from the field. The 
infantry of the League as yet stood their ground 
and outnumbered the whole army of the King ; if 
his cavalry had scattered in pursuit, the issue of the 
day might have remained ambiguous and incom- 
plete. But Henry had given most express orders 
that his horse if they broke the enemy were to keep 
their order and return to their positions. The Cath- 
olic Swiss, when they saw that the King's guns were 
about to be turned against their squares, did not 
care to be shot down in the cause of a leader who 
had proved an indifferent paymaster, and surren- 
dered without a blow. The German foot would 
gladly have done the same, but the memory of their 
treachery at Arques was fresh, and they were cut 



2 1 2 Henry of Navarre. [1589- 

down without compunction. A large part also of 
the French infantry either perished on the field, or 
were drowned in trying to cross the flooded Eure. 
Mayenne, careful only to secure his own escape, 
caused the bridge at Ivry to be broken down as soon 
as he had crossed, but the King passed the river at 
another place, and hunted him as far as the gates of 
Mantes. 

The victory was complete. The army of the 
League was annihilated ; of 4,000 horse, 1,500 were 
dead or prisoners. The infantry had disappeared, 
the standard of Mayenne, black lilies on a white 
field, and the red cornet of the Count of Egmont, 
were among the King's trophies. 

The unexpected and complete rout of their army 
caused such alarm and confusion among the partisans 
of the League at Paris that it was generally believed 
that if the King had ridden straight on to the gates 
of the Capital he would have met with no resistance. 
He himself wished to make the attempt, but, with 
the noteworthy exception of La None, the most 
authoritative voices in his Council were loud against 
such rashness. Continuous rains had made the 
roads impassable. The treasury was empty and the 
most necessary supplies not to be, obtained. The 
soldiers had exhausted their ammunition. Specious 
reasons, but few of the King's advisers wished his 
triumph to be speedy and complete. Least of all. 
Marshal Biron, whose opinion had the greatest 
weight in military matters. Even among the Prot- 
estants, some like the Dukes of Thouars and Bouil- 
lon thought they had more to hope from the 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France? 213 

necessity than from the gratitude of Henry, while 
many honest Catholics, believing that by his conver- 
sion he might at any moment disarm all serious 
opposition, did not wish him to secure the throne 
without paying the price which he already, so to 
speak, held in his hand. He might be honest in 
protesting that he intended no change in the estab- 
lished religion of the State ; but as a heretic he must 
remain under the papal ban, and in a prolonged con- 
test with Rome to what lengths might he not be 
driven ? How painful in any case the dilemma to 
his orthodox subjects ! On the other hand, if, as the 
official phrase ran, he received instruction, Sixtus V., 
whose hostility to the League and Spain was no 
secret, would without delay welcome him into the 
bosom of the Church. The more moderate of the 
King's opponents were not less desirous of his con- 
version than his Catholic supporters. Villeroy, who 
had left Paris, visited his friend and neighbour Du 
Plessis-Mornay, and endeavoured to prove to him 
the necessity that Henry IV. should conform to the 
religion of the large majority of his subjects, in order 
that the perishing State might be relieved from the 
misery of civil war ; while he pointed out to May- 
enne with a frankness creditable to a man constitu- 
tionally timid, that he was now entirely dependent 
on Spain, and that Spain insisted upon being paid 
for every soldier and every ducat by some strip of 
territory, some sacrifice of French interests and inde- 
pendence. The Guises asked for and expected Span- 
ish doubloons, but Philip would send them Spanish 
veterans. Besides, who could believe that the Duke 



2 14 He7iry of Navarre. [1589- 

was fighting for the Catholic faith and the relief of 
the people, who saw how those who followed him 
served God by blaspheming His Holy Name, pil- 
laging churches, violating every law human and 
divine. ''Our Union," he concluded, " from top to 
bottom is nothing but disunion ; our towns are full 
of lawlessness, riot and poverty ! " 

The King had probably from the moment of his 
accession looked upon his conversion as a conces- 
sion which might become unavoidable, and he had, 
as we have seen, even before 1589 prepared the way 
for such a step by professing on all occasions his 
wiUingness to '' receive instruction " and to renounce 
any errors of which he might be convinced. 

Henry IV. was not an unbeliever, not inaccessible 
to religious emotion ; in trouble or sickness he found 
comfort in prayer and in the psalms which had 
soothed his infancy, but his emotions were super- 
ficial and transitory, his ambition deep and enduring. 
His creed he said was that of all honest men. Yet 
it cannot be doubted that in his heart he held 
Protestantism to be nearer the truth than Romanism. 
D'Amours preaching before the King, when it was 
known that he had made up his mind to be con- 
verted, warned him not to provoke God's judgment 
by wilfully sinning against light. The Catholic 
courtiers cried out that such insolence should be 
punished. "Why," said the King, ''what would you 
have? he has only told me a home truth." 

Perhaps Henry still hoped that he might be able 
to establish his authority while remaining a Prot- 
estant. Elizabeth of England had tried the policy 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France ? 215 

of comprehension ; like him a latitudinarian, she had 
endeavoured to establish a national Church on so 
broad a basis that by degrees both Catholics and 
Reformers might, it was hoped, be induced to attend 
its services and be able to interpret its doctrine to 
their own contentment. This attempt had failed. 
The hostihty of the Romanists was growing more 
and more marked, and there were already signs that 
the more logical Protestants would before long as 
unequivocally reject the Anglican compromise. In 
France, at any rate, it was clear that comprehension 
was utterly impossible ; and Henry was determined 
to adopt the other alternative, toleration. 

But then the old principle of the French Mon- 
archy — "one king, one faith, one law" — must be 
abandoned, the close connection between Church and 
State must be severed or at least relaxed. A State 
Church, an established Church, might continue to 
exist, and that Church could be none other than the 
Roman Church, the Church of the vast majority, but 
it would have to be recognised that those who were 
not within its pale might be good and loyal members 
of the State. 

This could perhaps be best brought about if the 
King, the personification of the State, the symbol of 
national unity, was himself a Protestant, sufificiently 
liberal and honest to respect the position and priv- 
ileges of the Establishment. 

If the King was Catholic, the identification of 
Church and State would again appear so complete 
that heresy might lead to disloyalty, that a man 
who rejected the King's creed would not un- 



2i6 Henry of Navarre. [1589- 

reasonably be suspected of wishing to impair liis 
authority. 

Besides it was evident that the Protestant minority 
must have an organisation — for the government of 
their Church, if not for self-protection ; if the King 
was a Huguenot he would be the natural head of 
this body, if he was a Catholic the Protestant com- 
munity might become a danger to national unity. 

The army of the League was so entirely annihilated 
at Ivry that Mayenne was scarcely able to collect 
6,000 men in the course of the next five months. 
Nor had his partisans been more lucky in other parts 
of the country. It was noticed by the Royalists as 
a remarkable and auspicious coincidence that on the 
very day of the great victory the Leaguers of 
Auvergne were routed and their leader slain, and 
an attempt to surprise the garrison of Le Mans 
defeated. 

Henry IV., now that he was undisputed master of 
the open country, determined to starve the Capital 
into submission. Even had it appeared an easy 
thing to take by assault a town defended by a 
garrison of three or four thousand regular soldiers 
and ten times as many armed and trained citizens, 
the King was unwilling to expose his Capital to the 
horrors of a sack. 

When the first panic caused by the news of Ivry 
was allayed, vigorous preparations were made for 
the defence of the city. The Spanish ambassador, 
Mendoza, was foremost in authority and counsel. To 
him and to his master the defeat of Mayenne was 
not wholly unwelcome ; for the Duke was now com- 




HENRY «V. 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France f 217 

pelled to lay aside all affectation of independence 
and to approach Philip as an humble suppliant, al- 
though secretly as determined as ever to play for his 
own hand. 

Careful inquiry showed that Paris which contained 
220,000 inhabitants was provisioned for about a 
fortnight. 

The King's garrisons commanded the rivers and 
roads, but the venality of their ofificers allowed many 
convoys to pass. Eight thousand measures of corn, 
10,000 barrels of wine were added to the public stores. 
For a month no scarcity need be feared, and long 
before then, so the preachers assured their congre- 
gations, Parma's matchless veterans would relieve 
the CathoHc King's '' good city," or else God would 
raise up a second Jacques Clement to save His 
people in the hour of their need. And this perhaps 
was the hope on which most reliance was justly 
placed, for, as Henry wrote to his mistress, the num- 
ber of assassins who were persuaded to attempt his 
life was scarcely credible. The usual means, pro- 
cessions, placards representing atrocities inflicted by 
heretics and Royalists, virulent broad-sheets and 
more virulent sermons, were employed to rouse the 
fanaticism of the mob. The Sorbonne declared 
(May 7th) that even if Charles of Bourbon on his 
death-bed were to recognise his nephew as his heir 
(the King of the League died in prison two days 
later), and Henry abjuring his heresy were absolved 
by the Pope, even then he would be incapable of 
succeeding to the Crown. 

Scarcely had this decision of the Faculty of The- 



2i8 Henry of Navarre, [1589- 

ology been promulgated, when the citizens saw from 
the walls the Royal army, 12,000 foot and 3,000 
horse, drawn up in order of battle before the suburbs 
of St. Antoine and St. Martin. Charenton and all 
the fortified places in the neighbourhood fell, and 
although an attack on St. Denis was repulsed, the 
city was soon closely invested. 

Before the beginning of August, although some 
precarious supplies had found their way through the 
royal lines, and although the Jesuits and other re- 
ligious houses had been compelled to produce their 
private stores, the Parisians had well-nigh exhausted 
the disgusting though common dietary of famine, 
rats and other vermin, boiled leather, offal and the 
like, and were compelled to have recourse to even 
stranger and more hateful viands. By the advice of 
the Spanish ambassador bones were collected from 
the cemeteries, ground down and baked into loaves. 
But those rarely survived who ate of this so-called 
" bread of Mme. de Montpensier." That lady herself 
refused, it was said, 2,000 crowns for her lap-dog, 
reserving it for her last meal ; but on what, mean- 
time, was the animal itself fed ? A woman, and she 
one of the wealthier sort, salted down her infants who 
had died of starvation, but found in this Thyestean 
banquet no sustenance, only madness and death. 
The stomachs or fancy of the lansquenets was less 
nice, if, as was believed, they carried off and roasted 
any stray child they met. 

On July 24th, the royal army, which had been 
considerably reinforced, assaulted and carried the 
suburbs. The walls of the city itself might no doubt 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France? 219 

have been stormed, but the King knew the extrem- 
ities to which Paris was reduced, and beHeved it 
to be impossible that it should hold out for more 
than a few days. The people were daily dying by 
hundreds, their corpses lay unburied in the streets, 
noisome reptiles, toads and adders, multiplied in the 
empty houses. Processions, sermons thrice daily, 
the Host permanently exposed on the altars, nay 
even Spanish silver could not stay the pangs of star- 
vation. Everywhere the cry, " Peace or Bread," be- 
gan to be heard. Parma indeed had sent word that 
he was preparing to march, and hoped to unite his 
forces with those of Mayenne on or before August 
15th; but these tidings only increased the popular 
despair. Why could not this have been done a 
month, two months earlier? In a fortnight more 
Paris would no longer be a city of the living, but a 
vast charnel house ! 

To satisfy the people, Nemours and his council 
were compelled to send Gondi, the Bishop of Paris, 
and Espinac, Archbishop of Lyons, to open negotia- 
tions with Henry. Although they styled him King 
of Navarre, he received them with courtesy, only re- 
marking that their feet would be well scorched in 
the next world for so misleading their flocks in this. 
But he flatly refused to allow questions concerning 
the general settlement of the nation to be mixed up 
with a treaty for the capitulation of Paris. 

It seemed impossible that the patience of the 
citizens could endure for another week ; yet the 
siege continued more than twenty days longer. 
Henry's humanity prevented his triumph. He al- 



2 20 Henry of Navarre. [1589- 

lowed many of the starving inhabitants to pass his 
lines, three or four thousand miserable wretches on 
one day ; thus exciting the indignation of his good 
ally, the Queen of England. '* If God," she wrote, 
" shall, by His merciful grace, grant you victory, I 
swear to you it will be more than your carelessness 
deserves." He sent presents of food and of dainties 
to the Princesses, even to his most determined 
enemy, Mme. de Montpensier, and thus seemed to 
sanction similar attentions to their friends on the 
part of the nobles in his camp. The officers and 
even the private soldiers at the outposts thought it 
no great harm to sell small quantities of provisions 
at enormous prices to the starving citizens ; an irreg- 
ularity which it was difficult to check, since the King 
could not pay his troops and did not choose to bribe 
them by the prospect of the sack of the great city. 

But though such chance supplies might enable the 
besieged to struggle on a few days longer, Henry IV. 
was confident that the final catastrophe was none the 
less inevitable and near. Mayenne, whom he had all 
but captured on his way to Laon, he did not fear, 
and he could not believe that Parma would leave the 
Netherlands and his all but accomplished task, to 
march to the relief of the League, letting the sub- 
stance go, to grasp at the shadow, as the Prince 
himself complained to Philip II. 

It was therefore a most unwelcome surprise to the 
King to hear that the Governor of the Netherlands 
with 13,000 men had joined the Lieutenant-General 
of the League at Meaux on August 23d, and that 
they were marching upon Paris. 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France f 221 

La Noue, Bouillon, Henry himself, wished to leave 
a sufficient force to prevent any convoys of provi- 
sions entering the Capital, — the Parisians were so re- 
duced, that it need not be numerous, — and with the 
rest of the army to take up a strong position at 
Claie, three leagues from Meaux, thus compelling 
Farnese either to make a long circuit or to give 
battle in a position advantageous to his adversaries. 
In the latter case, there was every hope that a 
decisive victory would end the war, in the former 
that before the Spaniards could reach Paris the 
Royalists would be within the walls. 

The Leaguer Villeroy and the Huguenot Aubigne 
agree that this plan would have been successful. 
But the strenuous opposition and specious argu- 
ments of Marshal Biron induced the King to with- 
draw his forces from all the posts they occupied 
round Paris, and to offer battle to Parma in the 
plain of Bondy. 

The forces of the Duke of Parma were about equal 
to those of the King of France. His Spanish 
veterans had proved their quality on many a battle- 
field amid Dutch dykes and swamps, in many a 
wearisome siege and fiery assault ; their stubborn 
valour and discipline, their rapacious and devilish 
cruelty were the admiration and the dread of Europe ; 
but to their general this expedition into France was 
but an episode, and an unwelcome interruption in 
the great contest to which he had devoted his genius 
and his life, seeing the resolute countenance and 
brave array of his opponents, he had no mind to risk 
in a pitched battle the army without which he could 



222 Henry of Navarre. [1589- 

not hope to attain the object of his ambition. When 
he found himself confronted by the French army he 
took up a position which was soon made too strong 
for attack by the labour of his men, trained like the 
Roman legionaries to the use of pick and spade. 
Henry IV., following the usage of feudal warfare, 
sent a herald to offer battle. Parma replied, that he 
would fight when and where it was convenient to 
him and not before. Five days the armies remained 
opposite each other. Then by some skilful manoeu- 
vres Farnese threw part of his forces across the 
river, and taking Lagny, opened the navigation of 
the Marne. Convoys of provisions were now pouring 
into Paris, the King in vain attempted to lure or 
compel the Spaniards to fight. The royal army 
melted away. Henry did what, under the circum- 
stances, was probably the best he could. He distrib- 
uted his mercenaries as garrisons in the towns near 
Paris, and himself retired into the Beauvaisis with 
the most faithful of his friends and a small force 
composed mainly of cavalry. 

On September i8th Mayenne entered Paris, but the 
past sufferings had been too severe, the future was 
too threatening for the sight of the Prince who called 
himself their deliverer to excite any enthusiasm 
among the inhabitants, Parma also visited the city 
he had relieved. But he pleased few. He humili- 
ated Mayenne, making him feel that the Lieutenant- 
General of the Crown of France must not presume to 
think himself the equal of the Lieutenant of the King 
of Spain. Even those Leaguers who were not unwil- 
ling to be the servants of Philip were disgusted when 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France? 223 

they found that the doubloons earned by their sub- 
servience were not forthcoming. The Parisians bit- 
terly complained that the Spaniard did not clear all 
the neighbourhood of the Royalist garrisons. Parma 
did indeed take Provins and one or two small places 
and next attacked Corbeil, but Corbeil resisted for 
three weeks and the siege cost the lives of many of 
his veterans. A few more such captures and his 
army would be undone. Deaf therefore to the 
entreaties of his allies and the outcries of the citizens 
the Italian marched away, compelling Mayenne to 
accompany him, pursued and harassed as far as the 
Belgian frontier by the King and his horsemen. 

No sooner had the Spaniards turned their backs 
than Paris was once more surrounded on every side 
by hostile garrisons. Yet two things had been 
achieved by Farnese. He had proved to Mayenne 
that he was powerless without Spanish help and he 
had prevented Henry from entering his capital a con- 
queror and a Protestant. Yet it may well be doubted 
whether he would have accomplished even so much, 
but for the fatal advice of Biron. The Marshal was 
determined to prolong the Civil War, that work-shop, 
as La None terms it, of every iniquity detestable to 
honest folk, but also, as Biron conceived, the work- 
shop in which the edifice of his fortunes might be 
completed. What to such as he was the ruin of their 
country, the unutterable misery of thousands, com- 
pared with the satisfaction of their ambition ? 

Paris continued to be hemmed in by the royal gar- 
risons. Provisions became ever scantier and dearer, 
and strange diseases, the result of privation and un- 



2 24 Henry of Navarre. [1589- 



natural food, decimated the population. Trade and 
industry had ceased. The colleges of the University 
were deserted. Desolate streets and empty houses 
bore witness to the sufferings of a town which even 
then owed much of its prosperity to the visitors who 
were attracted by the fame of the gayest and most 
pleasure-loving capital in Western Europe. But an 
unsuccessful attempt to surprise one of the gates was 
made the pretext for introducing a Spanish garrison 
sufificient to guard the city against the despair of its 
inhabitants as well as against assault. 

As Philip II. had previously embarked on the In- 
vincible Armada the men and treasures which would 
have completed the conquest of the Netherlands, so 
he now left Parma to struggle with insufificient 
resources against Prince Maurice, while he poured his 
soldiers into France. Four or five thousand Span- 
iards were sent into Brittany. The wife of the Duke 
of Mercoeur, the Leaguist governor of that province, 
was descended in the female line from the old ducal 
House, and Mercoeur had counted on Breton love of 
independence for support in a struggle against a 
prince in whose veins there ran no drop of the blood 
of the Duchess Anne ; but he was soon so hard pressed 
by the Prince of Dombes, the chief of the Loyalists, 
that he had been compelled to beg for help from 
Philip II. No sooner had the Spaniards landed than 
Queen Elizabeth, who could not allow the Breton 
ports to fall into the hands of Spain, sent 3,000 Eng- 
lish to the assistance of the King's forces and Brittany 
became the scene of a tedious war, little connected 
with military operations in other parts of France, in 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France ? 225 

which EngHsh and Spaniards consulted rather their 
own interests than those of their native alHes. 

In Languedoc also the League had been unable to 
hold their own against the Duke of Montmorency 
without foreign help, and a small Spanish army of 
4,000 men garrisoned Toulouse. 

The Duke of Savoy, who had crossed the frontier 
as the champion of orthodoxy, was making rapid pro- 
gress in Provence ; he had been received with royal 
honours by the ParHament of Aix, had entered Mar- 
seilles and scarcely concealed the ambitious hope of 
reconstructing the Burgundian kingdom, a name 
applied at different times to states of very various 
extent, but embracing at least Provence, Dauphin^ 
and the country between the Saone and Jura as well 
as Savoy and much of south-western Switzerland. 

On all sides the neighbours of France were pre- 
paring to divide the spoils of the expiring monarchy, 
while the Spaniard was determined that the lion's 
share should be his. 

The death of Sixtus V. (August 27, 1590), violent 
fanatic though he was, and the election of Gregory 
XIV. added to the difficulties of Henry IV. For 
Sixtus, though he hated heresy much, hated Spain 
more. Not long before his death he had been heard 
to say that Elizabeth of England and Henry of Na- 
varre were the only sovereigns living to whom, had 
they not been heretics, he would have disclosed 
the great projects he meditated, and he had not con- 
cealed his displeasure that his legate Caetano allowed 
himself to be the tool of the Spanish faction in Paris. 
One of the most ardent preachers of the League an- 

15 



2 26 Henry of Navarre. i1589- 

nouncing from the pulpit the death of God's vicar, 
thanked Him for delivering Christendom from a 
''wicked and political Pope." 

But the opposition of open enemies was perhaps 
not the greatest difficulty against which Henry had 
to contend. His Catholic supporters began to ques- 
tion the sincerity of the often repeated promise to 
receive instruction. If he was in earnest, why, it was 
asked, defer a step so advantageous to his interests? 
If a dozen bishops and divines could not supply suffi- 
cient learning to enlighten the royal conscience, 
would the more tumultuous theology of a council 
suffice? 

The Huguenots, on the other hand, complained 
that it profited them nothing that a King of their own 
faith and supported by their arms had ascended the 
throne ; their condition had been better during the 
last reign. Now, if three families met together to 
pray for the King's prosperity, if a citizen sang a 
psalm in his shop, or had among his wares a French 
bible or psalter, they were punished as criminals by 
the Royal Courts. 

The Princes of the King's own family sought to 
profit by the general discontent. A letter was inter- 
cepted addressed to the Pope by the Cardinal of 
Bourbon, the brother of the late Prince of Conde, in 
which he excused himself for having hitherto ad- 
hered to the King of Navarre. He had done so in 
the confident hope of his conversion. But as he 
was now convinced that this hope was futile and 
that the head of his house was an obstinate heretic, 
incapable of reigning, he begged the Holy Father to 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France f 227 

assist him in establishing his right to the succession. 
His elder brother, the Prince of Conty, might indeed 
seem to have a prior claim, but he was deaf, as well 
as deficient in mental and bodily vigour. The Car- 
dinal indeed was himself little better than imbecile ; 
but his abler brother, the Count of Soissons, had 
joined in the intrigue to which many of those about 
the King were more or less privy, even his mistress, 
the Countess of Grammont. 

Soissons, after fighting valiantly by his cousin's 
side at Coutras, had been encouraged to hope for 
the hand of the King's sister Catherine. The match 
was a brilliant one for a poorly endowed younger 
son, and the Princess herself was well worthy of a 
disinterested attachment. But Henry changed his 
mind and told Soissons that he must look elsewhere 
for a wife. The lovers thought that after he had 
himself brought them together the King had no 
right to insist upon their separation, and Mme. de 
Grammont, to whose care Henry had entrusted his 
sister, permitted or encouraged their correspond- 
ence, and listened to Soissons's schemes even when 
stretched beyond the bounds of loyalty. Perhaps 
she thus sought to avenge herself for the more fre- 
quent infidelities and the growing coldness of her 
lover. 

Henry IV. had a pretty gift of writing love letters, 
in which Jove might have found matter for perennial 
laughter ; and he was rarely wise enough to be off 
with the old love before he was on with the new, a 
want of prudence which was the source of much 
vexatious and undignified embarrassment. 



22 8 Henry of Navarre, [1589- 

Down to the end of 1590 he continued to write to 
Corisande with his usual protestations of eternal 
fidelity, kissing her fair eyes a million times and 
omitting none of the common forms of epistolary 
fervour, yet in the summer of the same year — not to 
mention more commonplace gallantries — he had 
been ardently courting a lady, who remained un- 
moved by an offer of marriage even though written 
in his blood, and by the well-known letter sent on 
the eve of an expected battle with Parma. " My 
mistress, I am writing this line to you the night 
before a battle. The issue is in God's hands, who 
has already ordained what it shall be, and what He 
knows to be for His glory and for the good of my 
people. If I lose it you will never again see me; 
for I am not the man to turn my back. Yet this I 
can assure you, that if I die, my last thought will be 
of God, to whose mercy I commit both you and my- 
self ; my last but one of you." 

This Platonic infidelity to his Corisande was no- 
torious; not less notorious the intrigues with the 
abbesses of Poissy and Montmartre which had re- 
lieved the tedium of the blockade of Paris. Mme. 
de Grammont, perhaps was conscious that she 
had become elderly, bloated, and red, and her 
coldly sceptical annotations on letters written two 
years earlier remain to show how little she was the 
dupe of her royal lover's professed constancy — a 
constancy he declared so great that it was a per- 
petual marvel to himself. She probably felt that her 
tenure of the official position of mistress was very 
precarious, and hoped by serving the ambition of the 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France f 229 

younger Bourbons and the affections of Catherine 
of Navarre to make herself friends who might re- 
ceive her, if abandoned by the King. 

Henry IV. on discovering the intrigue contented 
himself with summoning his cousins to attend him, 
trusting while they were under his eye to be able to 
prevent any further treachery, and it is possible he 
might have continued to throw himself at Cori- 
sande's feet and to kiss her hands — at least on paper 
— had not a new passion led him to seize so decent 
a pretext for ending a now irksome connection. 

During the campaign of 1590 Bellegarde, a favour- 
ite officer, asked his master as they were passing by 
Coeuvres, the seat of Antoine d'Estrees, to visit a 
daughter of that gentleman whom he was courting. 
The King went, and found that even a lover's tongue 
had done scanty justice to the charms of Gabrielle. 
No sooner had he left her presence, than he felt that 
he must at all risks return ; but Coeuvres was sur- 
rounded by parties of the enemy. Prudence and 
dignity were laid aside ; disguised as a wood-cutter, a 
bundle of straw on his head, the King of France 
found his way to the feet of his mistress. At first 
she laughed at the swarthy, grizzled, hook-nosed little 
man who aspired to be the favoured rival of the brill- 
iant Bellegarde, a model of manly beauty. But she 
was dazzled by the splendid prospect of becoming 
the acknowledged mistress of the King, and Henry 
profuse in promise was scarcely less liberal in 
performance. 

To save appearances Gabrielle was married to a 
M. de Liancourt, a widower with eleven children, so 



230 Hefiry of Navarre. [1589- 

ugly and elderly that he was not likely to provoke 
comparisons unfavourable to the King. To the 
young lady this was the least satisfactory part of 
the arrangement, and after the King had publicly 
acknowledged her first child, the superfluous husband 
was got rid of by an indecent divorce. 

Mme. de Liancourt w^as successively created 
Marchioness of Monceaux and Duchess of Beaufort. 
The portraits of the fair Gabrielle scarcely justify the 
extravagant terms in which contemporaries celebrate 
her beauty; and some scepticism is perhaps justi- 
fied when we reflect that during her lifetime there 
was every motive to flatter the all powerful favour- 
ite, and that when dead she became a legend. 

When, in her twentieth year, Gabrielle first met 
the King, her figure, although already too mature, 
was exquisitely proportioned. Her complexion was 
fair and brilliant, her golden hair contrasted with 
dark, well pencilled eyebrows, and long lashes 
shadowing blue eyes, which though soft were bright 
and lively. Her regular and placid features — whose 
rare beauty, says Aubigne, was free from all wanton- 
ness — suggested a candid and virginal innocence 
strangely inconsistent with the scandals reported of 
her youthful depravity. These stories, too vile to 
bear repetition, were probably false, but the reputa- 
tion of her family was thoroughly bad. Her mother, 
a woman of no character, was one of a house noto- 
rious for gallantry. She and her sisters had been 
known as the seven deadly sins. 

It is not therefore surprising, that the virtue of 
Gabrielle was not of a kind to take alarm at the 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France ? 231 

bargain by which she passed into the King's posses- 
sion, nor even sufficient to induce her to mitigate 
the shame of it by observing from the first an in- 
violable fidelity to her royal lover. The King's 
letters prove that Bellegarde at any rate continued 
to be a not unfavoured rival. 

'^ The influence your eyes have on me," he writes 
on one occasion, '' saved you from half my re- 
proaches. But if I had known what I have since 
learnt of my rival's visit, I should not have seen you, 
but have broken with you for good. . . . What 
more can you promise than you have- already prom- 
ised ? What oath can you swear that you have not 
twice broken ? " It is characteristic that Henry ends 
his, no doubt just, complaints by protesting that he 
would give four years of his life to reach his mistress 
as soon as his letter, and that a few days later he 
should thank her for the gift of her likeness in such 
terms as these : " I am writing to you, my dear love, 
at the foot of your picture, which I worship because 
it is meant for you, not because it is like you. I am 
a competent judge, since you are painted in all 
perfection in my soul, in my heart, in my eyes." 

Men who allow themselves the grossest licence 
not unfrequently expect their women to attain to an 
almost ideal standard of constancy and purity. 
Henry was less exacting. His experience of married 
life had taught him to give and take in such matters ; 
and Gabrielle, though not a woman of much ability 
— her prayer-book was her whole library, — knew how 
to flatter the King, '^ the bravest man in all the 
world," as she called him ; she protested that the 



232 Henry of Navarre. [1589- 

least of his sufferings was mortal to her. " I am the 
Princess Constance," she writes, *' full of feeling for 
what concerns you, insensible to all the world 
besides." 

On the whole, and compared with the intrigues 
which caused much of the disquiet and sadly tar- 
nished the glory of Henry's later years, his connec- 
tion with Gabrielle d'Estrees was neither harmful to 
the State nor disgraceful to himself. Even austere 
Calvinists commended her modestly dignified be- 
haviour, " that of a wife rather than of a concubine," 
and occupying a position most exposed to envy and 
malevolence she yet made few enemies. 

Urged on the one hand by the Catholics to abjure 
his heresy, and on the other by the Protestants to 
make their condition under a king of their own 
faith more tolerable, the King determined upon one 
more effort to crush his enemies by force of arms, 
before attempting a final settlement of questions 
with which as a victor he would be able to deal more 
satisfactorily. To quiet the impatience of the Hugue- 
nots he meantime revoked such edicts as had been 
extorted from Henry HI. by the League, and de- 
clared those of 1577 and 1580 to be still in force; 
while he endeavoured to allay the apprehensions of 
the Catholics by reiterating his promise to " receive 
instruction," and his firm determination to maintain 
the Catholic and Apostolic Church in all her dignity 
and privileges. He at the same time pointed out that 
religion was but the pretext under which his foreign 
and domestic enemies were pursuing the ruin and 
partition of the kingdom. 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France ? 233 



By assembling a strong army of regular troops, 
composed for the most part of foreign and Protestant 
mercenaries, the King trusted to avoid two of the 
difficulties which had hitherto prevented him from 
reaping the full advantage of his victories. The one 
was that of keeping the nobles and gentlemen who 
served as volunteers in the field during a protracted 
campaign or siege ; the other was that which arose 
from the determination of many of his Cathohc sup- 
porters that he should not be too easily successful 
and thus escape the necessity of abjuration. 

Turenne, ably seconded by the arguments of an 
EngHsh embassy, was sent to the Protestant Courts 
of Germany, and when he returned at the head of 
6,000 German Reiters and 10,000 lansquenets, he had 
fairly earned the reward of the staff of marshal and 
of the hand of the heiress of the La Marks, in her 
own right Duchess of Bouillon and sovereign Princess 
of Sedan. 

Elizabeth also, urged by Walsingham and by Es- 
sex, forgot her wonted parsimony, and 6,000 men 
well supplied with artillery and with all the materials 
of war landed under the command of the favourite 
at Dieppe. 

The EngHsh Queen once more asked for Calais 
as the price of her assistance ; but to this de- 
mand Henry would not listen. It was as bad, he 
said, to be eaten by the lioness as by the Hon ; and 
whatever his enemies might do he would not buy 
the throne by partitioning the kingdom over which 
he aspired to rule. Like the true mother in Solo- 
mon's judgment, rather than receive part of a 



234 Henry of Navarre. [1589- 

mangled corpse, he would altogether forego the pos- 
session of his own. 

He employed the spring and early summer of 
1 591 in reducing Chartres and other places in the 
neighbourhood of Paris while his captains attacked 
the towns held by the League in Normandy. Before 
the end of the summer, the double crosses of the 
League floated only over the walls of Havre and 
Rouen. 

The Parisians were again sorely straitened for 
food. Mayenne was execrated for allowing Chartres, 
the granary of Paris, to fall into the hands of the 
enemy. The preachers had promised their congre- 
gations that no such triumph should ever be granted 
to the wicked. Should this happen, exclaimed one 
fanatic, might the devil have his soul— but no, never 
would the Bearnese, that dog heretic and tyrant, 
take Chartres. 

Mayenne had summoned a meeting of the Estates- 
General at Rheims, but on the day fixed so few rep- 
resentatives appeared that no attempt was made to 
hold a sitting. Yet clearly, unless the succession 
was settled, a pretender to the throne selected and 
recognised, the opposition to Henry IV. could not 
be continued. 

The King of Spain was urgent that the claim of 
his daughter should be at once acknowledged. He 
was assured by the Sixteen and by the extreme party 
that nothing could delight them more than that he 
should reign over them ; if that might not be, then 
they and all good Catholics would be the loyal sub- 
jects of the Infanta and of any son-in-law it might 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France f 235 

please his Majesty to choose. The letters in which 
the faction expressed their devotion to Philip 11. 
were intercepted by the Royahsts and forwarded by 
the King to Mayenne. The Lieutenant-General of 
the League was already sufficiently perplexed by 
the escape from prison of his nephew, the young 
Duke of Guise, whom he dreaded as his most 
dangerous rival. Guise, as the son of their martyred 
hero, was highly popular with the Catholic mob, 
and his marriage with the Infanta and election as 
King by the Estates might have united the sup- 
porters of the House of Lorraine, the Spaniards and 
the democratic party, and have reduced the Lieu- 
tenant-General of the League to insignificance. 

Mayenne was therefore scarcely less anxious than 
Henry IV. to prevent the marriage of his nephew 
with the Spanish Princess. His wisest and most 
staunch adviser, Jeannin, began to urge what Villeroy 
had seen from the beginning : that the League could 
be maintained only by Spanish help. " We cannot," 
he said, " do otherwise than ascribe to the King of 
Spain the credit and gratitude due for our existence, 
but the payment which he demands involves the 
sacrifice of the independence and future of France." 
He therefore maintained that Mayenne ought to 
conclude an arrangement on the best terms possible 
with Henry of Navarre. The King's conversion in- 
deed might be insisted upon, but, if this essential 
point was secured, further resistance would be both 
foolish and criminal. 

The Duke affected to be convinced by the argu- 
ments of his followers, but was none the less de- 



236 Henry of Navarre. [1589- 

termined to let matters drift, careless, provided he 
could glut his selfish greed, whether France became 
Spanish or perished, the prey of more ignoble 
domestic enemies. 

Meantime the sympathy of all decent citizens in 
Paris had been alienated by the violence of the 
fanatics, who, trusting to the support of the con- 
siderable Spanish garrison, had established a reign 
of terror, and appealed although in vain to popular 
passion. Privation, famine and pestilence had so 
broken the spirit of the mob, that not even the 
highly spiced invectives of the preachers and the 
prospect of licence and plunder could arouse it to 
acts of violence. 

By the sale of Crown lands and of much of his 
private domain, the King had raised a considerable 
sum of money for the expenses of the campaign. 
He was joined in September by the English com- 
manded by Essex, and on the last day of the month 
he met, in the valley of the Aisne, the Reiters and 
lansquenets of Turenne, led by the Prince of Anhalt. 
In November he undertook the siege of Rouen with 
an army composed of between 5,000 and 6,000 
English, as many Swiss, 14,000 Germans and only 
5,000 French — an army of Protestants and merce- 
naries. The capture of Rouen, the second town in 
the kingdom, would have made him absolute master 
of Normandy and of north-western France, would 
have dealt a fatal blow to the League, and have com- 
pelled the Parisians to acknowledge the authority of 
a heretic king. Unfortunately Henry was compelled 
to allow the Catholic nobles to occupy the most ^ 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France ? 237 

important posts in his army ; had he not done so, it 
would have been said, that trusting none but heretics 
he obviously intended the ruin of the Church. As 
it was, the success of the King's plans was made to 
depend on the co-operation of men who were de- 
termined that they should not succeed : the baser, 
like old Biron, till their greed was gorged ; the less self- 
seeking, till, by his conversion, he had pledged himself 
to maintain the estabHshed religion. 

Now, when their services would have been of ines- 
timable value, Henry must sorely have missed two 
men, so greatly trusted and respected both by Calvin- 
ists and Romanists that their employment would have 
given umbrage to none. La Noue, whose noble char- 
acter and Christian resignation to the indignities and 
sufferings inflicted on him in his Flemish prison by 
the mean rancour of Philip II., had stirred the sym- 
pathy of the cold and pitiless Parma, whose integrity 
even Catherine de' Medici had not doubted, whose 
disinterestedness no temptation had ever shaken, who 
had been as unsparing of his fortune as of his blood 
in the service of his religion and of his country, who, 
keenly sensible of the pleasures of retirement, of 
study and family life, had spent his years hurrying 
from battle-field to battle-field — La Noue, the Protes- 
tant Bayard, without fear and without reproach, had 
fallen in August (1591) before Lamballe in Brittany. 
The day before his death, gathering a spray of 
laurel, and handing it to a kinsman he had said : 
" There, cousin, is all the reward that you and I 
may expect." 

Scarely less lamented or less honoured by friends 



238 Henry of Navarre, tl589- 

and foes, Chatillon, Coligny's son, had died, con- 
sumed, so it was reported, by disappointment and 
melancholy, shortly after his skill as an engineer had 
compelled the surrender of Chartres. His house of 
Chatillon had been pillaged, his young brother D'An- 
delot had been taken prisoner, and, seduced by the 
caresses of the Guises, had forgotten his cause, his 
religion and his father's blood. His son, a mere 
child, had fallen fighting against the Spaniards in 
Holland. His services had been requited by neglect, 
although the King with ready tears lamented the 
worth he had slighted when living. "Alas! I loved 
him well ; he should have opened his heart to me 
and it would have been my study to content him." 

Biron, who had been sent to open the siege of 
Rouen in November, delayed the attack on the ill- 
fortified town and citadel until the Governor, Villars, 
a man prepared to sell himself to the highest bidder, 
but who, to enhance his price, was determined to 
give no ambiguous proofs of his valour and capacity, 
had had ample time to complete his preparations. 
Great stores had been accumulated. The old walls 
had been strengthened and new fortifications added 
on every side. All useless mouths and all who were 
suspected of royalism had been sent out of the city, 
and everything done to raise the spirits and confirm 
the resolution of those who remained. 

Never would the citizens of Rouen acknowledge a 
heretic as King of France ; such was the answer to 
the herald who bade them open their gates to their 
rightful sovereign ; and this temper was sustained by 
constant processions, solemn oaths to resist to the 



16$2] Can a Heretic be King of France f 239 

death, fiery sermons and eloquent decrees of the Par- 
Hament, and lest these should not suffice, by gibbets 
prepared in all public places for the traitors who first 
spoke of treaty or surrender. 

It was a perilous venture to begin the siege of 
a strongly garrisoned and well provisioned city in 
November. Yet it is possible that, had Biron not 
been wanting in loyalty or resolution, the city might 
have been carried by an immediate assault : in any 
case, the King was compelled to use an army which 
his finances could not maintain in idleness. Unfor- 
tunately the winter proved exceptionally severe. 
The trenches could scarcely be dug in the frozen 
ground ; sickness and privations decimated the be- 
siegers. Before the end of the year, Mornay had to 
be sent to beg for further help from Elizabeth. 

The old Queen was in no pleasant mood. She 
complained that her men had been recklessly ex- 
posed, that they had borne more than their share of 
the hardships and privations of the siege ; out of 
5,000 barely 600 survived. Henceforth she would 
only assist the King of France with her prayers. 
She was highly indignant with Essex for not coming 
back when summoned and for exposing himself in 
the trenches. As for the King himself, his reck- 
lessness was incurable — apparently he wished to be 
killed, yet he must know that everything depended 
on his life. She even blamed the revocation of the 
edicts against the Protestants as impolitic. 

The United Provinces were less easily discouraged 
— Parma might as well be fought in France as in the 
Netherlands. Early in January a Dutch squadron 



240 Henry of Navarre. [i589- 



brought 3,000 men and large supplies up the Seine, 
and the losses of the besiegers were more than made 
up by the numerous French Royalists who hurried to 
the King's standard, when it was known that Far- 
nese was assembling his forces for the relief of 
Rouen. 

By the end of January, Parma and Mayenne had 
met and were advancing through Ponthieu. The 
King, who had been pushing the siege with indomi- 
table energy, endeavouring by his personal exertions 
to remedy all that was done amiss or left undone by 
Biron, beHeved himself strong enough to hold the 
allies in check without breaking up his leaguer. 

Leaving the Marshal with his infantry before 
Rouen, he advanced to meet the Spaniards with 
3,000 Reiters, 2,000 French horsemen, and 2,000 
dragoons, a name then first given to troops who 
were used as mounted infantry. 

Near the little town of Aumale he met the enemy 
23,000 or 24,000 strong, and when himself leading a 
reconnaissance, was surrounded by a much larger 
force of cavalry. Speedy flight would have ensured 
his safety, but he persisted in charging to cover the 
retreat of his escort ; he was wounded by a ball which 
pierced the bow of his saddle, and was only saved from 
capture or death by the devotion of those around him 
and by the caution of Parma, who checked the pur- 
suit, since he was convinced that the King of France 
would not have ventured so boldly unless supported 
by a considerable force. When he learnt what an 
opportunity he had lost, he exclaimed in his vexa- 
tion that he had supposed himself to be fighting 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France ? 241 

against a general and not a guerilla chief. In little 
more than a week Henry was again in the saddle, 
harassing the advance of the Leaguers, cutting off 
their parties and beating up their quarters. On 
February 17th he attacked their camp by night, carry- 
ing off much booty and many prisoners. Among 
the latter the Count of Chaligny, a prince of the 
House of Lorraine, was captured by Chicot, the 
Court jester, a Gascon of sense and courage as well 
as of merry wit. " Here, Henriot," he said, bringing 
his prize to the King, " is a present for you." The 
Count, enraged at the tone and quality of his captor, 
struck him so violently on the head with the pommel 
of his sword that Chicot never jested again. 

The King's energy so delayed the advance of 
Parma, that it was not till the end of February that 
he found himself within striking distance of Rouen. 
But Biron, instead of pressing the siege with energy, 
had allowed himself to be surprised by Villars in 
a furious sally on February 24th. The Royal- 
ists lost 800 men, their ammunition and mines 
were destroyed, their batteries overthrown, and 
many of the guns triumphantly dragged into the 
town. The old Marshal himself was wounded. 
Parma might have now entered Rouen, but Villars 
and Mayenne were so elated, that they trusted to 
hold the town without the assistance of a Spanish 
garrison. More than one intercepted despatch of 
Mendoza and Tassis had been forwarded to Mayenne 
by Henry IV., and their contents had increased the 
fear and suspicion with which he regarded his allies. 
This jealousy of Parma perhaps counterbalanced 



242 Henry of Navarre. [1589- 

the injury done to the royal cause by the half-hearted 
service of Biron. But when Farnese fell back to the 
Somme, the people of Rouen found that they had 
been premature in thanking their patron Saint for 
delivering them out of the hand of the Heretic, who, 
after repairing and strengthening his works, was 
again pressing the siege in person. Elizabeth, less 
bitter since the safe return of Essex, and moved 
perhaps by her favourite's report of Henry's roman- 
tic admiration of the Virgin Queen, a topic on 
which he never failed to dilate with Gascon emphasis 
in her subject's presence, sent timely reinforcements, 
while the Dutch fleet prevented any supplies reach- 
ing the town by water. 

Urgent messages came from Villars to Mayenne 
and Parma: unless relieved by April 20th he must 
capitulate. 

In four days the Spanish general marched from 
the Somme to the Seine. The King of France had 
dismissed his cavalry ; his infantry was scattered in 
the towns round Rouen, where they had been 
quartered to recover from the sufferings of the 
winter. Henry himself was at Dieppe when he 
received the news that Parma was again marching 
on Rouen (April 19th). He at once flung himself on 
his horse and rode without drawing rein till he 
reached the camp. It was midnight, but he found 
his men already in full retreat. Nor could he blame 
the resolution of his captains. It would have been 
madness to attempt to hold their extended lines 
against such an enemy as Parma, and when threat- 
ened both in rear and front by far superior forces. 



1592] Can a Heretic be King of France? 243 

The King determined that he would at any rate 
fall back no farther than was absolutely necessary. 
He took up a strong position three leagues from 
Rouen, and there awaited the feudal militia he had 
already summoned to his standard, and the troops 
dispersed in the neighbouring towns. On the next 
day 1,500 of the Norman gentry rode into camp, and 
before the week was out (April 26th) he was once 
more at the head of 18,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry. 
Meanwhile Parma and Mayenne had destroyed the 
siege works, entered Rouen in triumph, reinforced 
the garrison and relieved the necessities of the 
inhabitants. Parma wished to attack the King at 
once before he had collected his forces ; but Mayenne 
persisted that Rouen was only half relieved so long 
as the Royalists held Caudebec and commanded the 
navigation of the river. Caudebec accordingly was 
invested on the 24th of April and surrendered on 
the 26th. Parma, while directing the attack, had been 
wounded in the arm. Without changing counte- 
nance he continued to point out how his batteries 
should be placed. But his physical endurance was 
not equal to his courage ; high fever set in, and he 
was obliged to leave the command to Mayenne, who, 
as soon as Caudebec had surrendered, took up his 
quarters at Ivetot, a few miles to the north. 

When the King found himself at the head of an 
army superior in numbers to the enemy, he marched 
round their rear and threatened their communica- 
tions with Havre and Lillebonne. Constant engage- 
ments were fought from April 28th to May 9th in 
which the Royalists had the upper hand. The sup- 



244 Henry of Navarre. [1589- 

plies of the confederates were intercepted, and they 
were reduced to extreme want. 

The King's hopes ran high — with a wide tidal river, 
commanded by the Dutch fleet, in their rear, either 
his enemies must starve or they must attempt to 
force their way to Picardy or Rouen and give battle 
to an army superior in numbers, and which was daily 
growing. Surely, he said, they were delivered into 
his hands. But he forgot the ill-will of his own 
captains and the genius of his opponent. Parma, 
though his weak constitution was still suffering from 
the pain and fever of his wound, left his bed and dur- 
ing the night of May lOth led his army back towards 
Caudebec. Henry IV. fell on the retreating Span- 
iards, while Biron attacked Mayenne's French. The 
Leaguers were thrown into such confusion that the 
younger Biron engaged, if his father would give him 
800 horse, to complete the rout. '' What," shouted 
the Marshal with an oath, '' would you send us back 
to plant cabbages at Biron ? " As he turned away 
the young man muttered that, were he the King, his 
father's head would not long remain on his shoulders. 
But even so, enclosed as he was by superior forces 
and by a river as broad as an arm of the sea, there 
was, Henry supposed, no escape for Parma. 

But the Italian strategist while tossing in the fever 
of his wound had formed the plan which he now pro- 
ceeded to carry into execution. For some days all 
available boats, rafts and pontoons had been col- 
lected by his orders at Rouen, and on the night of the 
1 2th were sent down with the ebb tide to Caudebec. 
Before morning dawned the greater part of the 



1592] Ca7i a Heretic be King of Finance ? 245 

Catholic army had already crossed to the southern 
bank of the river. Their cavalry and the guns of a 
hastily constructed fort kept the King's horse at a 
distance from the place of embarkment till the re- 
maining infantry and artillery had been ferried 
across. Then the Catholic horse retreated along 
the river bank to Rouen with such speed that the 
Royalists could not intercept them. 

But although Farnese had accomplished a feat 
which raised to a still greater height his reputation 
as the first general of that century, he was far from 
having extricated himself from danger. The King 
had, even yet, a chance of annihilating his opponents. 
They could not shut themselves up in Rouen, which 
was but scantily provisioned. Henry IV. saw that 
it was possible for him to send his 8,000 cavalry 
across the Seine at Pont de I'Arche to break down 
the bridges across the Eure, and delay the advance 
of the Catholics until he should have time to throw 
himself with his infantry between his enemies and 
Paris. But his generals protested that Parma had 
too great a start, that pursuit was useless. The 
Swiss and some of the Germans refused to move till 
they had received their arrears of pay, conduct so 
much in accordance with the usual practice of these 
hirelings, that we need not suppose it to have been 
suggested to them by the traitors in the royal camp. 

Farnese, suffering from his wound and from his 
constitutional ill-health, hurried on past Paris, leav- 
ing 1,500 Walloons to reinforce the Spanish garri- 
son, and reached the Netherlands with an army 
reduced to half its numbers by sickness or the sword. 



246 Henry of Navarre. [1592 

The subsidies of the Dutch had been well invested. 
Mayenne, who had gained little honour in the cam- 
paign, lay sick of an illness caused by debauchery at 
Rouen. 

But the King was in no position to profit by the 
weakness of his enemies. His treasury was empty. 
He could not pay his Swiss and German mercenaries ; 
and without pay they would serve no longer. The 
French nobles and gentlemen hurried to their homes, 
as their custom was after a campaign. It therefore 
only remained for him to dismiss with gracious 
words his Enghsh and Dutch allies, and to abandon 
the hope, so nearly realised, of crushing his opponents 
and of entering his capital, the master of his kingdom 
on his own terms. 

In all parts of the country from Languedoc to 
Lorraine, and from Savoy to Brittany, the civil war 
dragged on during the summer, on the whole to the 
advantage of the Royalists. But the most marked 
result was the increased misery and devastation of 
the country, and that everywhere the Leaguers be- 
came more and more dependent on the money and 
men of Spain, and therefore more and more the ob- 
sequious clients of Philip II. 

The death of Marshal Biron before Epernay, de- 
livered the King from the exorbitant pretensions of 
a man whom he could not afford to offend, and whose 
insatiable vanity and selfish ambition made his great 
parts, improved though they were by study and 
knowledge of books, as well as by a wide experience 
of camps and courts, of little use to the cause he 
served, or to his country. 




CHAPTER VI. 

THE KING GOES TO MASS AND ENTERS PARIS. 




1592-1595- 

HE great hopes founded by Henry on 
the powerful army which had been 
so painfully collected, were bafBed. 
Rouen and Paris had been snatched 
from his grasp. Yet it is not true that 
after a struggle of two years, after 
heroic exertions and brilliant victories, the King was 
in no better position than before Ivry. 

Frenchmen had at least learnt to know what 
manner of man it was who claimed their allegiance 
as the legitimate heir of St. Lewis. His gay and 
chivalrous valour, his jovial wit, his genial affability, 
which, free from all condescension, rather raised those 
to whom it was shown than lowered him who showed 
it, his niarvellous placability, his humanity, his ready 
sympathy, nay his very vices recommended him to 
his countrymen. Even the most credulous must 
have smiled when they heard Henry of Bourbon 
inveighed against from the pulpit, as a merciless and 
fanatical tyrant ! 

247 



248 Henry of Navarre, [1592- 



In Paris the Moderates at length began to stir. 
In the previous year (1590) Mayenne himself had 
broken the power of the fanatical faction. The 
Parliament, although composed of -those mem- 
bers who had refused to follow their more loyal 
brethren when they seceded from the rebellious 
capital, had never entirely forgotten the conservative 
traditions of their profession ; and, by acquitting a 
lawyer accused of royalist proclivities, aroused the 
anger of the '' Sixteen." The people, they exclaimed, 
must seek by the dagger that justice which was 
denied in the law courts. Lists of the proscribed 
were prepared. Brisson, the first President of the 
Parliament, a jurist of European reputation, and two 
other magistrates of high position and character were 
seized, dragged before a turnultuary and illegal 
tribunal, and hurriedly executed. But the mob lis- 
tened with apathy to the wild and inflammatory 
harangues of preachers and demagogues. So unusual 
was such moderation on the part of the excitable and 
violent populace of Paris, that in L'Estoile's opinion 
it could only be ascribed to an extraordinary and 
singular mercy of God. 

Not only the Politicians, but all Leaguers who had 
any sense of humanity and justice, called upon the 
Lieutenant-General to put an end to the tyranny of 
a handful of murderers and fanatics. 

Mayenne had no love for a faction which was 
devoted to Spain and which would gladly have 
assisted the young Duke of Guise to supplant him. 
He hurried to Paris, obtained possession of the Bas- 
tille, seized and executed four of the most active 



1596] The King Goes to Mass. 249 

members of the Sixteen. Others not less guilty 
saved themselves by flight. An oath of obedience 
to the Lieutenant-General of the Union and to the 
Parliament, until the Estates should have elected an 
orthodox King, was imposed on all. 

The vigour shown on this occasion by Mayenne, 
gave him for the moment an appearance of strength, 
yet it was but the appearance. He was hated by 
the fanatics, suspected by the Spaniards, neither 
liked nor trusted by the Moderates ; he was supported 
only by a few personal followers, and by some am- 
bitious nobles who hoped, by adhering to him, to sell 
themselves, when the time came, at a higher price to 
the King. 

All this had happened while the royal forces were 
gathering round Rouen ; and since then the desire 
for peace and weariness of clerical and Spanish 
domination had been growing. In the autumn 
of 1592 the Politicians and the more moderate 
Leaguers made the scarcity of provisions and the 
cessation of all trade a pretext for holding meetings 
to consider how the war might be ended and the 
sufferings of the people alleviated. A large majority 
were in favour of "summoning" the King of 
Navarre to abjure his heresy, and of endeavouring 
in the meantime to conclude some form of truce 
which would allow supplies to reach the capital. 

Mayenne in alarm collected what troops he could, 
and came to Paris, where the Spaniards assisted him 
in preventing a step which would have amounted 
to an engagement to recognise Henry as soon as he 
should ''receive instruction." Hitherto the accepted 



250 Henry of Navarre. [1592- 

doctrine of the League had been, that as a relapsed 
heretic he had forfeited all claim to the throne, 
and that no simulated conversion, nor even the 
papal absolution itself, could relieve him from this 
disability. 

Mayenne had promised to the Spaniards that the 
Estates should meet and settle the succession in the 
first months of the new year (1593). Philip 11. had 
determined, if possible, to secure the Crown for the 
Infanta in her own right, or, if that might not be, as 
the wife of a prince, to be chosen by him and elected 
by the representatives of the nation. To obtain this 
end he intended that the Estates should meet in the 
presence of an irresistible Spanish army. 

Parma was determined that if the thing must be 
done it should not be done by halves. If he must 
again abandon the war against the Dutch, to in- 
tervene in France, he would perform his task so 
thoroughly that it should need no repetition. 

During the summer he had been recovering from 
his wound and nursing his constitutional infirmities 
at Spa. In the late autumn he ordered his Spanish 
and Italian veterans, his lansquenets and Walloon 
men-at-arms to assemble at Arras. He intended to 
enter Paris, where a palace was being prepared for 
him, at the head of an irresistible force, and to im- 
pose his master's will on Mayenne and the Estates, 
while he earned the gratitude of the citizens by 
driving the royal garrisons out of the neighbouring 
towns. This venture, at any rate, little as he ap- 
proved of it, would not, like the invasion of England, 
be at the mercy of fickle winds and waves. 



1595] The King Goes to Mass. 251 

But fate can baffle men in many ways, and on 
December 3d, Alexander Farnese lay dead at Arras. 
His army dispersed : he had only been able to pay 
it by pledging his personal credit ; for the master of 
Mexico and Peru was once more a bankrupt. 

The Duke of Feria, with a few troops and a scanty 
supply of money, was left to attempt a task which 
the prestige and resources of Parma might hardly 
have accomplished. 

The death of the great Italian was welcome news 
to Mayenne. Now he trusted to find Philip II. less 
stiff. Now he could look forward with less appre- 
hension to the meeting of the Estates. Now he felt 
confident that, if the Spaniards did not close with 
the terms he offered, he would be able to hold 
matters in suspense till he compelled the King to 
purchase peace at a price which would entail the 
division of France into provinces ruled by hereditary 
governors, as independent of the Crown as the 
great feudatories of the loth and nth centuries. 

The States-General were summoned to meet in 
January (1593). The partisans of Spain and the 
League were active in endeavouring to secure the 
return of their friends. '' They say," the preachers 
exclaimed, ''the Bearnese will go to Mass; so will a 
dog. Credulous blockheads ! Don't you see the 
old wolf is only foxing, in the hope of eating the 
sheep ? But go to ! our good Politicians love this 
Ventre St. Gris, He is a spark to their taste, for they 
are swine whose bellies he has promised to fill. 
Good God ! it is a fearful thing to imagine that there 
should be any peace possible with a bastard such 



252 Henry of Navarre. [1592- 

as he is, a heretic, a relapsed miscreant, a devil ! " 
But diatribes such as this excited only disgust, except 
among the dregs of the mob, who lived on the doles 
of the convents and the largess of the Spaniards. 

On January 26 (1593), the representatives met in 
the hall of the Louvre, to decide, so Mayenne as- 
sured them, the weightiest matter ever laid before 
the Council of the nation. At this first session there 
were only 60 members present and among them 
no representatives of the nobility. When, after- 
wards, the deputies of the more distant towns and 
provinces had arrived, the greatest number who 
ever sat was only 128, among whom there were but 
24 nobles. The lay Estates of the South-western 
and Central Provinces did not send a single repre- 
sentative. According to Villeroy, those who came 
were for the most part factious and needy men, 
enemies of the public peace, elected for the express 
purpose of supporting the designs of the Spaniards. 
Such is the evidence of a Leaguer ; the Royalist De 
Serre says that they were seditious and corrupt 
fellows chosen from the very dregs of the people. 
So contemptible in numbers and composition was 
the Assembly which was summoned to subvert the 
fundamental laws of the kingdom and to disinherit 
the rightful heir of St. Lewis. Yet a majority of 
the representatives of Paris belonged to the moderate 
party in the League, nor does the conduct of the 
Estates generally appear to merit such uncompro- 
mising condemnation. They showed some signs of 
patriotism, some desire of peace, some wish to 
escape the domination of Spain. 



1595] The King Goes to Mass. 253 

The Clerical and Spanish party suffered a defeat 
on the first question decided by the Estates. May- 
enne had invited the Cathohc nobles and Princes of 
the King's party to abandon an obstinate heretic, 
and to join the representatives of the people in 
bestowing the crown on a Catholic king. They had 
replied by proposing that the Estates should send 
envoys to a conference to be held at some place be- 
tween Paris and the royal lines. These proposals, in 
spite of the opposition of the Hispaniolised fanatics, 
were accepted by the Estates. The chosen envoys 
left Paris amid loud rejoicings and cries of '' Peace, 
peace— blessings on those who ask for and obtain it ; 
all others to hell and damnation." 

But before the arrangements for the conferences 
at Suresne, between the royal commissioners and 
those of the Estates, had been completed, Feria, the 
plenipotentiary of Philip II., had entered Paris to 
make known the will of his master and what he was 
prepared to do for France and the cause. 

Although the instructions given to Feria ad- 
mitted the possibility of less favourable contingencies, 
Philip II., misled by the servile protestations of the 
extreme faction of the League, imagined that he 
could obtain France on his own terms. The Duke 
was first to demand from the Estates the recogni- 
tion of the Infanta as the direct heir of Henry II. ; 
if the Salic superstition could not be overcome, he 
was next to suggest that they should elect as king 
the Archduke Ernest, who should receive the hand 
of his cousin with the throne. If, incredible as it 
seemed, the French should cling not less to the 



2 54 Henry of Navarre. [1592- 



spirit than to the letter of the Salic law, and should 
refuse a foreign king, then let the Crown be be- 
stowed on the Infanta and such French prince as 
her father should select as her husband within two 
months. Lastly, if the Estates should prove so un- 
reasonable as not to be willing to leave the choice of 
a king to their benefactor, let them elect the Duke 
of Guise, and Philip would condescend to accept 
him as son-in-law. 

The last was the only really possible alternative. 
If, from the first, Feria had said, '■' Elect Guise, and 
my master will marry him to his daughter and main- 
tain the claim of the new King with his men and 
money," there is little doubt that the fervour of the 
Fanatics and Democrats, of the clergy and of the 
adherents of the House of Lorraine, would have 
overborne the open opposition of the more moder- 
ate, and the secret ill-will of Mayenne. The elec- 
tion of a pretender whose hereditary popularity and 
personal attractiveness would have excited some en- 
thusiasm, and in whose assistance Philip would have 
strained to the utmost his still formidable resources, 
would certainly have revived the war, and post- 
poned, even if it had not changed, the issue. But, 
fortunately for France and Europe, Feria was not 
the man to go beyond his instructions. Wrapped 
in the dense self-conceit of his Castilian pride, and 
mistaking an ill-timed dilatoriness for dignity, he 
did not even begin to negotiate with the States- 
General, until Henry IV. had communicated to 
their envoys at Suresne his determination to '^re- 
ceive instruction " within the next two months. 



1595] The King Goes to Mass. 255 

without waiting till a council could be assembled, 
and until the retreat in miserable plight of the 4,000 
or 5,000 men with whom the Spaniards assisted 
Mayenne to take Noyon, had proved how Httle was 
to be expected from their arms. 

Two months elapsed in futile discussions before 
Feria had exhausted the previous alternatives and 
produced Philip's last offer — to honour Guise, if he 
were elected, with his daughter's hand. Abundant 
signs had not been wanting that it was mere waste 
of time to attempt to secure the Crown for the In- 
fanta on other terms. When the Spaniards claimed 
the throne for her in her own right, Rose, Bishop of 
Senlis, one of the most rabid Leaguers, burst forth 
into a violent tirade. He saw that the Politicians 
were right when they said that Spanish zeal was all 
hypocrisy, a mere cloak for worldly ambition. Nay, 
he shouted, such pretensions would make him turn 
Politician himself. To break the Salic law was to 
ruin the kingdom. 

As for the Parliament, they protested that it was 
treasonable even to debate proposals so subversive 
of the fundamental constitution of the realm, and 
proclaimed null and void any treaty for the election 
of a foreign prince or princess to the French throne. 

Dreux meantime had fallen, and the last remain- 
ing road by which supplies could reach Paris was in 
the King's hands. It was certain that Henry IV. 
meant to conform ; and, if he did so, by far the 
larger part of the League and the vast bulk of the 
Catholic population in Paris and in the other great 
towns would be anxious to end the war by submis- 



256 Henry of Navarre. [1592- 

sion to his authority. BeHn, the Governor of Paris, 
not unmindful perhaps of courtesies at Arques, said 
that if Henry went to Mass he and the other nobles 
would at once acknowledge him as their King. It 
was idle for the papal legate to declare that only the 
Pope could absolve a relapsed and excommunicated 
heretic ; and when Mayennewith an air of compunc- 
tion said, that Christ did not accept lip service and 
must be worshipped in heart, the audience laughed. 

The King had invited various prelates and theo- 
logians to meet on July 15th, for his instruction. 
None could doubt that the League was at the last 
gasp, when in spite of spiritual and temporal threats, 
four of the parish clergy of Paris made their way to 
St. Denis, and among them one of the most furious 
of the preachers who, with such frantic and weari- 
some pertinacity, had beaten to arms on their drum 
ecclesiastic. 

Henry, as it will be remembered, had promised at 
his accession to " receive instruction " within six 
months. Four years had now elapsed and he was 
still listening with more or less profit to the sermons 
of his Calvinist ministers. '' The same," wrote Du 
Plessis-Mornay, '' in religion, the same, alas, that I 
should say it, in his pleasures. I rejoice when I see 
that he is not ashamed of Christ's gospel, I grieve 
when I see the shame his life does to the profession 
of that gospel." 

The Catholics had looked upon the promise to be 
instructed, as equivalent to an engagement to con- 
form to the Roman Catholic Church. The Protes- 
tants had hoped that the King would preside over a 



1595] The King Goes to Mass. 257 

council in which both rehgions would be repre- 
sented, and in which the superiority of the argu- 
ments of their divines would be so conspicuous 
that Henry might fairly refuse to abandon a faith 
the truth of which had been publicly and trium- 
phantly vindicated. These hopes might perhaps 
have been realised had the King been able to take 
Rouen and to crush the League with his Protestant 
army. He would then have been strong enough to 
brave the discontent of his Catholic friends. But 
now, although no enemy dared to meet him in the 
field, he had more to fear from those in his own 
camp than from his declared opponents. The ma- 
jority of the latter openly protested that nothing 
but his religion prevented them from acknowledging 
him as King ; while many of the former were already 
plotting against him. The troubles of the country 
would, they said, be ended if one of the Catholic 
Bourbons were chosen King. An orthodox prince 
would be readily accepted by the League, he might 
satisfy Spain by marrying the Infanta; Mayenne 
had his price, and such was the exhaustion and suf- 
fering of the country that no terms by which quiet 
and peace were restored would be unwelcome to 
the people. Even those who were more loyal were 
discontented. They could, they complained, endure 
this continual warfare no longer. They were weary 
of serving a king who never rested day or night, 
who was accustomed to live with his Huguenots on 
the wretched plunder of peasants' hovels, to warm 
himself by a blazing barn, to sleep among cattle and 
horses in filthy stables. 



258 Henry of Navarre. [15^2- 

D'O, weary of the care, of an exchequer so empty 
that even his skill and experience could find noth- 
ing to steal, made himself the mouthpiece of the 
discontent of the old courtiers of Henry III. '' Un- 
less the King could make up his mind to go bravely 
to Mass he must expect the Catholics to mount 
their horses and leave him." Wherever he turned, 
writes a fervent Calvinist, the King saw cold looks 
and the hearts of his followers alienated from him. 
Every hour he was warned of attempts to corrupt 
the loyalty of the governors of his towns and castles. 
He was so uncertain whom he might trust that he 
surrounded himself with English troops. 

On all sides he was plied with the same argu- 
ments : by his mistress, who imagined that the Pope 
might be induced to grant him a divorce, and who 
urged the tranquil delights they might enjoy if he 
were released from his perpetual anxieties and 
alarms ; by the envoys of the Italian princes, who 
complained that they were in a false position, as the 
friends of an excommunicated heretic, but that all 
Italy, weary of the tyranny of Spain, would be the 
ally of a CathoHc king of France ; by his own most 
trusted advisers ; and especially by the Huguenot 
Sully, who pointed out the many advantages the 
King might hope to gain by conforming to the 
church of the majority of his people : the submission 
of the moderate Leaguers and the satisfaction of his 
Catholic partisans, the rude awakening of his cousins 
from their ambitious dreams, his own safety and 
ease, the termination of the misery and sufferings of 
the country, nay, even the gain to the Protestants 



1595] The King Goes to Mass. 259 

themselves, who might be better protected by a 
Cathohc than by a Huguenot reigning on suffer- 
ance. He even went so far as to maintain that, in 
his opinion, the King need not be disturbed by any 
fear lest his spiritual welfare should suffer. Since 
surely ''whoso believes the Apostles' Creed and dies 
obedient to the Decalogue, in charity with his neigh- 
bour, loving God with all his heart, and trusting in 
His mercy and the merits of Christ's death, cannot 
fail to be saved, whatever the sect may be to which 
he belongs." A fine sentiment no doubt, and true, 
but which does not meet the case of the perjured 
profession for worldly motives of a creed which is 
not believed. 

The sophist Du Perron, Sully's friend, who had 
recently obtained the bishopric of Evreux and one 
or two latitudinarian ministers, who, it was sus- 
pected, had been not inaccessible to bribes, assisted 
in stifling the King's scruples. 

Yet bolder and more honest advisers were not 
wanting. Aubigne, if we may believe his own testi- 
mony, assured his master, that matters were not so 
bad as they seemed : the majority of Frenchmen 
were so weary of the war that for the sake of peace 
they would gladly acknowledge him whether CathoHc 
or Huguenot. If the Catholics chose a king, all 
the disappointed pretenders would turn against 
him. The insolent threats of the late King's cour- 
tiers, the plots of his cousins, were idle bugbears. 
But even if the worst were granted, God had raised 
him to victory and power from far lower depths. 
His chaplain D'Amours and . the aged Beza, his 



26o Henry of Navarre. tl592- 

mother's friend and spiritual director, to whose out- 
spoken admonitions he was in the habit of listening 
with much good-natured respect and little profit, 
begged him to bew^are of God's judgment if he be- 
came an apostate to what he knew to be the truth. 
Surely it was unworthy of a brave and magnanimous 
Prince to be driven to Mass by the fear of man. 

But Henry had made up his mind, and that not 
lightly or readily. His conversion would end the 
struggle in which the country was perishing. It 
would give him the repose, for which even his rest- 
less nature began to crave, in the midst of constant 
campaigns and sieges, cabals, conspiracies and plots 
against his life. It would really, so he persuaded 
himself, be to the advantage of the Huguenots ; the 
most they could now hope for was toleration and 
equal rights with their Catholic countrymen. As a 
Protestant King, all that he attempted to do for his 
fellow believers would be watched with the greatest 
suspicion, opposed and rendered nugatory by law- 
courts and officials. As a Catholic he would have a 
far freer hand. He afterwards repeatedly said that 
like St. Paul he had not refused to be anathema for 
his brethren. 

Du Plessis-Mornay, who some weeks before had 
believed the King, when he assured the Huguenots 
at Saumur that he did not mean to abandon the 
faith in which he had been bred, was now convinced 
that his purpose could not be shaken. Yet he 
wrote, ^' I will trust in our tears, and that though 
he forget God, God may not forget him . . . 
only I fear that our life, which we ought to have 



1595] The King Goes to Mass. 261 



changed rather than our religion, may lead us even 
to worse." Although Mornay had a taste for theo- 
logical discussions he refused to be present at the 
King's instruction. He was certain that Henry 
would not be moved by his arguments, and with 
pardonable self-complacency believed that after lis- 
tening to them he would more than ever be sinning 
against light. After the pervert had been received 
into the Roman Church, Mornay at length obeyed 
his reiterated prayers and commands to come to him ; 
for the King feared that in their first dismay and 
anger at his apostasy the Protestants might take 
some rash step. He had kept the Dukes of Bouillon 
and Thouars, whose ambition he most suspected, 
near him, and he wished to consult Mornay, to con- 
vince him that he did not intend to neglect the in- 
terests of the Huguenots, and to use his great 
influence to pacify their discontent. 

As soon as Mornay reached the Court, Henry 
called him into his cabinet, and attempted to justify 
his conversion in a private conversation which lasted 
three hours. The arguments which he used were 
probably those which had satisfied his own con- 
science. The position of his affairs had, he main- 
tained, giving the reasons urged by Sully and others, 
left him no choice. In his heart he was unchanged, 
yet he trusted that God would be merciful to him, 
since he acted for the good of his people. Also he 
believed, that the differences between the two re- 
ligions were not fundamental and had been exag- 
gerated by the animosity of the preachers, and he 
trusted to be able to compose them. Lastly, he 



262 Henry of Navarre, [1592- 

complained that the Protestants had not supported 
him as they might have done ; Mornay himself had 
cared less for him than for the interests of the cause. 

It was no doubt painful to Henry-to abandon doc- 
trines which he held to be true, and which he knew 
well how to defend. The Catholic theologians said 
they had rarely met a heretic better able to hold his 
own against them in argument, and he drily com- 
plained, that they had not satisfied him, as he had 
hoped, on the disputed points. 

Before rising on the morning when he was admit- 
ted into the Catholic Church, he spoke long with his 
Calvinist chaplain La Faye, his hand resting on his 
neck, and kissed him two or three times. On the 
day before, when he bade his ministers farewell, he 
asked them with tears to pray fervently to God for 
him, ever to love him as he would love them ; re- 
member them and never permit any wrong to be 
done to them or violence to their religion. Long 
after, when he thought himself dangerously ill, he 
was tortured by the fear that, in abjuring a faith in 
which he believed, he had committed that sin against 
the Holy Spirit, of which there is no remission. 

All this searching of the heart seems strangely at 
variance with the saying attribut.ed to Henry — that 
'' Paris was well worth a Mass." Yet he may have 
said that also. He passed rapidly from tears to 
laughter; from meeting-house or Mass to the 
chamber of his mistress. Since he had made up 
his mind to abjure his heresies, he carried out his 
resolution with the same light-hearted and cheerful 
assurance which he showed in battle, though he 



1595] The King Goes to Mass. 263 

often shivered and turned pale while putting on his 
armour. '^ I begin this morning," he wrote to 
Gabrielle, " to confer with the Bishops in addition 
to those whom I mentioned to you yesterday. The 
hope I have of seeing you to-morrow prevents my 
writing at greater length. On Sunday I shall take 
the perilous leap. At this moment, while I am 
writing, I have a hundred troublesome bores on my 
hands, who will make me hate St. Denis as much 
as you do Mantes. Good-bye, sweetheart, come in 
good time to-morrow, for it seems to me a year since I 
saw you. A million kisses for the fair hands of my 
angel and the lips of my dear mistress." 

On July 23d the King " received instruction " 
from the Archbishop of Bourges and four Bishops. 
They wished him to sign a detailed confession of 
faith in all the points of Romanist doctrine disputed 
by the Reformers. This he altogether refused. He 
was willing to live and die in the Roman Catholic 
Church, but he would not sign a confession contain- 
ing puerilities (badineries) which he was certain they 
did not themselves believe. 

The Bishops gave way, and a formula was pre- 
pared in which the King simply recognised the 
Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church as the true 
Church of God, promised obedience to it and to the 
Pope, and renounced all heresies contrary to its 
doctrine. 

On the next Sunday (July 25th), Henry, accom- 
panied by his princes and nobles and by the great 
officers of the Crown, and escorted by his French, 
Swiss and Scotch Guards, passed through streets 



264 Henry of Navan^e. [1592- 

thronged with a joyful crowd and strewn with 
flowers to the old church of St. Denis, of which the 
Kings of France were canons during their life, and 
in which they rested when dead. It was noticed 
that not a few of the thousands who rent the air 
with their cries of ''Vive le Roi " were Parisians 
who had made their way through the fortifications 
to witness an event which, it was hoped, would end 
the war. The church doors were shut. The King 
knocked ; they opened and disclosed the Archbishop 
of Bourges surrounded by seven Bishops and a crowd 
of clergy. '' Who are you ? " asked the Archbishop. 
" The King." '' What do you seek ? " '' To be received 
into the fold of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman 
Church " ; as he spoke, Henry knelt down and con- 
tinued, " I protest and swear in the presence of God 
Almighty, to live and die in the Catholic faith, to 
protect and defend it against all at the peril of my 
life and blood, and to renounce all heresies," hand- 
ing at the same time his signed confession of faith 
to the Archbishop, who thereupon gave him absolu- 
tion and led him into the choir, the clergy following. 
While the Te Deum pealed forth and the enthusi- 
astic multitude shed tears of joy, the King was 
heard in confession behind the High Altar, after 
which High Mass was celebrated, Henry devoutly 
casting himself on his knees at the elevation of the 
Host. 

The reiterated cheers of the populace, blare of 
trumpets, salvos of artillery, and, as the night closed, 
bonfires in all the neighbouring villages, announced 
to Paris that the " most Christian King," the " eldest 



1595] The King Goes to Mass. 265 

son of the Church," had been welcomed back, a re- 
pentant prodigal, into her communion. ''It is a 
perilous thing to do evil that good may come," 
wrote Elizabeth of England, lamenting the apostasy 
of her ally. If this be true,— and who will care to 
deny a truth which cuts away the root of that 
casuistry which is fatal to public and private 
morality? — then we cannot join those who praise 
the conversion of Henry IV. as a sacrifice of private 
feelings to public welfare. No doubt it facilitated 
the work of pacification and shortened the material 
sufferings of France, but at the price of setting up 
before the nation an example of the sacrifice of 
honour and principle, to expediency. The King 
assured the friends, whose faith he formally abjured, 
that he would never forget them ; that if need were 
he was ready to die in their defence ; and when in 
his coronation oath he swore to drive all heresy 
from his dominions he had fully determined to 
secure toleration and equal rights to his heretical 
subjects. This the Romanists knew, and therefore 
his abjuration did not preserve him from their plots, 
nor ultimately from the assassin's knife. If it was 
necessary that the King of France should be a 
Romanist ; if the connexion between Church and 
State was so intimate that all heresy was politically 
dangerous, then RicheHeu who deprived the Hugue- 
nots of their political privileges, and Lewis XIV. who 
refused toleration to their doctrines, were better 
statesmen than Henry IV. The dragoitnades of his 
grandson were the logical consequences of the con- 
version of the first Bourbon King. 



266 Henry of Navarre. [1592- 

The establishment on the French throne of 
Henry IV. even as a Roman Catholic was no 
doubt of the greatest service to the Protestant 
cause in other parts of Europe. Personal enmity 
to Spain, ambition and patriotism combined to 
cause Henry IV. to pursue as a Romanist the same 
policy he would have followed as a Protestant. But 
when Spain was no longer formidable, Lewis XIV., 
the ruler and the idol of Catholic France, was but 
acting in accordance with his position, when he in 
turn became the champion of orthodoxy and of 
despotism, the scourge of liberty and of Protes- 
tantism. 

The news of the King's conversion was received 
by all among the Leaguers who desired the preser- 
vation of the kingdom and of the Faith with as much 
joy, says Villeroy, as if they had been restored from 
death to life. 

The fury of the Zealots, on the other hand, knew 
no bounds and became even more extravagant in 
expression. Not the Pope, not even God, said the 
preachers, could absolve a relapsed heretic. Where 
was the Balthasar Gerard, the Jacques Clement, who 
would rid the world of this monster ? But with the 
exception of a few fanatics, the Leaguers listened 
with growing distaste and weariness to sermons 
sometimes three hours long, filled with abuse and 
scurrility. The more moderate among the clergy 
began to preach reconciliation and the Divine right 
of Kings. 

The controversy was waged even more vigorously 
in the pamphlets and broadsheets which poured 



1595] The King Goes to Mass. 267 

from the press, than in the pulpit, and here also the 
Royalists had the better of their opponents in wit as 
well as in moderation and good taste. 

But the Spanish party had other weapons besides 
those of argument and of honourable warfare. In 
spite of many previous failures it was hoped that 
the assassin's dagger might eventually deliver the 
Church from her enemy. The Rector of the Jesuits 
and one of the parish priests of Paris encouraged a 
young man, not unwilling to lay down for the faith- 
ful, a life, which disappointed love had rendered 
worthless to himself, to join the royal camp, and 
to watch for an opportunity of assassinating the 
King. Fortunately an Itahan Dominican, to whom 
the plot had become known, sent a warning. Bar- 
riere, so the youth was called, was arrested and 
broken on the wheel. 

A week after the King's conversion, a truce had 
been concluded for three months with the Leaguers. 
Henry had consented to treat with Mayenne as with 
an equal, for he believed that when the country had 
once tasted peace it would not permit itself to be 
dragged back again into war; especially if, as he 
hoped, he in the meantime obtained absolution from 
the Pope. Clement VIII. had hitherto refused to re- 
ceive his envoys, but he was now no longer a heretic. 
The Pope before his election had not been a par- 
tisan of Spain, and the Duke of Tuscany and other 
Itahan princes promised to exert their influence at 
the Vatican to the utmost on behalf of the King of 
France. Mayenne also told Villeroy to assure » 
Henry that he desired peace, that he was disgusted 



268 Henry of Navarre. [1592- 

with the Spaniards and that he also would do his 
best to persuade the Pope to grant the absolution. 

The Lieutenant-General of the Union had assented 
to the armistice because he had no choice. The 
mob threatened to throw the priests, whom they 
regarded as the main obstacles to peace, into the 
river ; they turned their backs on the legate when 
he gave them his benediction and insulted Feria. 
The Spaniards indeed made large offers, to Mayenne, 
of little less than the partition of the kingdom. 
But to carry on the war, money and men were 
needed and not promises, which, moreover, the Duke 
did not believe to be sincere, for he knew that the 
Sorbonne had advised that everything should be 
promised to him and nothing given. Meantime, 
with characteristic double deahng he sent a secret 
envoy to Rome to urge the Pope on no account to 
absolve the King of Navarre, and his son-in-law to 
Madrid to persuade Philip II. to promise the hand 
of the Infanta to his eldest son. 

The truce was prolonged till the end of the year. 
When it expired, all in arms against the King were 
to expect the punishment of rebels unless they 
submitted within a month. 

The hope that the Pope would readily grant the 
absolution had not been realised. Clement VIII. 
scarcely deigned to receive the letter which Henry 
IV. wrote to announce his conversion. He would 
not listen to the Duke of Nevers who was sent as 
ambassador. ''Don't tell me," he exclaimed, ''that 
. your King is Cathohc. I could never believe him 
to be converted unless an angel from heaven came 



1595] The King Goes to Mass, 269 

to whisper it in my ear. As for the Cathoh'cs who 
have adhered to him, I do not say that they are 
rebels and renegades to their reUgion, but they are 
only the bastard children of the maidservant, while 
they of the League are the true lawful children — 
buttresses and pillars of the Catholic Church." The 
Duke left Rome without having effected anything, 
or obtained any more comfortable assurance than a 
whisper from Cardinal Toleto, the chief adviser of 
the Pope, a moderate man, though a Spaniard and 
a Jesuit, that the Holy Father only wished to prove 
the King of Navarre's sincerity. 

A pretext therefore still remained for those who, 
like Mayenne, wished to hold out on a scruple of 
conscience till they could obtain better terms. 

In other respects the results of the truce were 
very much what the Royalists expected. The 
Estates like a burnt-out candle had dwindled and 
gone out in such obscurity that it is impossible to 
determine the date of their final meeting. The last 
ill-smelling flicker which attracted attention was 
the recognition by them of the decrees of the Coun- 
cil of Trent — a measure forced on their weariness 
and weakness by Mayenne, in order that reconcilia- 
tion might be made more difficult, since it was quite 
incompatible with the privileges of the Gallican 
Church, and with the principles of national indepen- 
dence stoutly upheld by the law-courts. 

The impossibility of any tolerable arrangement 
with Spain, the duplicity and selfishness of May- 
enne were more than ever patent ; and many sepa- 
rate negotiations had been opened with the towns 



270 Henry of Navarre. [1692- 

and nobles of the League, the effect of which was 
seen as soon as they had to choose between making 
their peace with the King and the renewal of 
hostilities. 

Vitry, Governor of Meaux, one of the most able 
and active of the Catholic captains, had been the 
first of the officers of Henry III. to leave his suc- 
cessor, because he would not serve a heretic. That 
he had no personal animosity to the King he had 
shown by consenting, while still in arms against 
him, to hunt the royal hounds during an illness of 
the huntsman. He now told the citizens of Meaux 
that as his Majesty was no longer a heretic he meant 
to return to his service, and the townspeople deter- 
mined to follow the example of their Governor. 

Le Chastre, Governor of the Orleanais and Berry, 
the uncle of Vitry, acted in like manner and the 
municipalities of Orleans and Bourges united with 
him in making their peace with the King. The 
citizens of Lyons had ended a long feud with their 
Governor, the Duke of Nemours, by seizing and 
imprisoning him in their citadel, and now in spite 
of their Archbishop Espinac admitted a Royalist 
garrison. The submission of this great and turbu- 
lent town, the commercial centre of France, was a 
great gain to the Royalists, and was likely to deter- 
mine the hesitation of Villars, the Governor of 
Rouen, with whom Sully was already negotiating. 
The ■ terms granted to the towns which submitted 
were generally the same. A complete amnesty for 
the past ; the confirmation of all the municipal 
privileges and franchises they already possessed ; an 



1595] The King Goes to Mass. 271 

engagement to build no citadel or to destroy those 
which already existed ; exemption from extraordi- 
nary taxation, together with large pensions and 
gifts of money to their Governors. No doubt it 
was better and even cheaper for the nation that the 
gates of the hostile cities should be opened by 
gold, that the King should buy back his kingdom, 
than that the country should be devastated, agricul- 
ture, manufactures and trade, the sources of all 
wealth, ruined by civil war. Yet, by purchasing 
the submission of his rebels Henry IV. taught the 
French nobility to believe that turbulence was prof- 
itable, a lesson not forgotten during the regencies 
of Mary de' Medici and Anne of Austria. Nor did 
it appear just that loyal subjects should bear a 
heavier load of taxation in order that the rebel towns 
and provinces might escape from the obligation of 
contributing to the necessities of the State. The 
King's most faithful servants had some reason to 
complain when they saw not only their services un- 
rewarded, but the sums lent to their master unpaid, 
while wealth beyond the dreams of avarice was lav- 
ished on his enemies. '' It is, I suppose, because I 
am necessary, that the King keeps me necessitous," 
wrote Du Plessis-Mornay, who had never grudged 
his money to the Cause ; and the large sums which 
La Noue had raised by mortgaging his estates were 
never repaid to his heirs. It is true that the King 
himself felt the pinch of want. He had not in' the 
winter of 1594 wherewithal to buy fodder for his 
horses. "■ My plight," he complained to the treas- 
urer D'O, '' is indeed wretched ; I shall soon have 



272 Henfy of Navarre. t1592- 

to go on foot and naked." Turning to one of his 
attendants he asked how many shirts he had — 
^*A dozen, Sire, and some of them torn." — ''And 
how many handkerchiefs ? Eight, is n't it ? " — ''No, 
Sire, only five." D'O, in excuse, said that to sup- 
ply these wants he had ordered 6,000 crowns' worth 
of linen from Flanders. " Well," answered Henry, 
" it seems I am like those scholars who, when they 
are dying of cold, talk of the furred robes they have 
at home." Yet this destitution did not prevent him 
from giving to his mistress a service of plate and a 
diamond heart, " very appropriate for her if angels 
wear jewellery." It is seldom that a dissolute and 
ragged pauper whose children are starving is with- 
out a shilling for drink and tobacco. 

Few could any longer affect to doubt that there 
was again a ruler in France, and two great events 
which took place during the first months of I594 
made it plain to all that there remained no colour- 
able pretext for refusing to him the title of King. 
These events were his coronation and the submis- 
sion of Paris. 

The monarchy of the Franks had been elective 
like that of the other Teutonic nations. The Mero- 
vingian kings attempted to assert an unconditional 
hereditary right ; but the Church which had assisted 
them to establish their authority, while she hedged 
round their Crown with a mystic and almost divine 
dignity, claimed the right of bestowing that dignity 
by a ceremony analogous to that which raised the 
priest above his fellow-men. Under the Carohn- 
gians the elective principle was reaffirmed, and the 



1595] The King Goes to Mass. 273 

nobles and prelates, who passing over the lineage of 
Charles the Great chose Hugh Capet as their king 
(987), doubtless intended to establish an elective 
monarchy no longer confined to the members of one 
family. For the next two hundred years the reign- 
ing monarch never omitted to procure during his 
lifetime the election and coronation of his eldest 
son. It was mainly owing to the fortunate chance, 
that till the death of Lewis X. (13 16) a direct male 
heir never failed the house of Capet, that the de- 
scent of the Crown to the nearest male heir of the 
deceased King came to be regarded as a matter of 
course. 

The presence of the peers of France at the King's 
coronation became an antiquarian pageant, which 
reminded only the most thoughtful spectators that 
the royal power had once been based on a compact 
between an elected ruler and his people. 

On the other hand the religious and mystic im- 
portance attached to the coronation ceremony had, 
if anything, increased. To lead her Prince to Rheims, 
that he might receive the sacred unction, was the 
finalaim and crown of Joan of Arc's ambition ; till 
after that ceremony he was to her only the Dauphin, 
nor does Froissart give him till then the style of 
King. 

One of the arguments used to determine the con- 
version of Henry IV. had been the question, how, 
while he remained a heretic, could he be crowned ? 

This difficulty no longer existed. Rheims with 

its cathedral and mystic oil was still in the power of 

the League. But there were precedents for the per- 
18 



2 74 Henry of Navarre, [1592- 

formance of the rite elsewhere. The coronation of 
Lewis VI. had taken place at Orleans and Henry 
determined to be crowned at Chartres, in the cathe- 
dral of which his ancestors had been patrons and 
benefactors. For once the tendency of relics to 
exist in duplicate was found useful. If the oil, 
brought to St. Remigius by an angel for the unction 
of Clovis, was not forthcoming, another scarcely less 
revered fluid of miraculous virtue was contained in 
a precious phial given by another angel to St. Mar- 
tin, the apostle of Gaul. This was preserved in the 
convent of Marmoustier, near Tours, where it had 
by special mercy escaped a wholesale destruction of 
relics in 1562. 

Everything was done to make the ceremony im- 
pressive. Henry of Bourbon claimed the throne as 
the representative of hereditary fight, he had been 
opposed on the ground that sovereignty was con- 
ferred by the people, and that to exercise it was an 
oflice so sacred, so nearly a priesthood that it could 
not be held by a heretic excommunicated and un- 
absolved. Yet all the ancient forms were now care- 
fully observed, forms from which, if all the annals 
of the French monarchy had perished, an historical 
student could have concluded with more certainty 
that it was originally elective and endowed with 
mystic sanctity by close connection with the Church, 
than the physiologist is able, from the presence of 
organs now useless and atrophied, to conjecture 
what were the conditions under which an animal 
has previously existed. 

The greatest nobles present with the King, dressed 



1595] The Kifig Goes to Mass. 275 

in magnificent and archaic robes, figured as the six 
great vassals, the lay peers of the French Crown, the 
Dukes of Normandy, Burgundy and Aquitaine, the 
Counts of Flanders, Toulouse and Champagne. 
Five Bishops represented the spiritual peers, the 
Bishops of Laon, Langres, Beauvais, Chalons and 
Noyon, who were either absent or dead. These 
peers raised Henry from his seat under the High 
Altar and presented him to the crowd, while the 
Bishop of Nantes, acting for the Duke-Bishop of 
Laon, asked whether they accepted him as their 
king? Then having been acknowledged by all the 
orders as their sovereign lord, he was clad in the royal 
robes, emblematic, as it was supposed, of the sanc- 
tity of Holy Orders, the tunic of the subdiaconate, 
the dalmatic of the diaconate, while the royal mantle 
represented the chasuble of the priesthood, girt with 
the sword, the rod of justice placed in his hands, and 
anointed in seven places with the miraculous chrism. 
After which he swore, his hand upon the Gospels 
which he reverently kissed, to protect the peace of 
the Church and of all Christian people ; to put down 
iniquity and violence ; to deserve God's mercy by 
enforcing justice, and lastly, to drive from his do- 
minions (exterminate) all heretics. Then, and not 
till then, did the of^ciating Bishop take the royal 
Crown from the High Altar, and the peers each 
touching it with their hands, place it on his head. 
Next they led him to a throne raised aloft on a stage, 
where they did homage to him in the sight of the 
crowd who thronged the vast nave of the stately 
Cathedral, — a crowd of nobles, magistrates and 



276 Henry of Navarre, '[1592- 

soldiers scarcely less bright than those marvellous 
windows above them which the art of the middle 
ages has filled with translucent gems. The loud and 
reiterated shouts of joy spreading from the interior 
of the church to the populace collected outside 
drowned the blast of the trumpets and the procla- 
mation of the heralds scattering largess. 

The crowned and anointed King returned to the 
neighbourhood of Paris to conduct in person the 
negotiations which were to place him in possession of 
his Capital, while Sully continued to bargain with 
Villars, the Governor of Rouen ; and to endeavour to 
beat down terms, the extravagance of which was a 
vexation to his economic soul : perhaps also he com- 
pared the price demanded by Villars for ceasing to 
be a rebel, 1,200,000 livres, equivalent to nearly ;^500,- 
000, a pension of 60,000, equivalent to nearly ^24,- 
000 and the revenues of six abbeys with the hardly 
earned rewards of many years of loyal service. 

The higgling and hesitation of his agent excited 
the King's impatience. " It is folly," he wrote, 
(March, 1594) " to raise so many diflficulties in a mat- 
ter the conclusion of which is so important for the 
establishment of my authority and for the rehef of 
my people. Do you not remember how often you 
have quoted the advice of a certain Duke of Milan 
(Francis Sforza) to Lewis XI. ? To separate by their 
private interests those who had leagued themselves 
against him under the pretext of the pubHc weal. 
This is what I intend to attempt. I prefer, even 
though it should cost twice as much, to treat with 
each severally, rather than to attain the same end by 



15951 



The King Enters Paris. 277 



means of a general treaty with a single leader, who 
would thus be able to keep together a faction in my 
realm." 

Thus urged, Rosny accepted Villars' terms, and 
Henry IV. was undisputed master of Normandy. On 
March 17th Sully received a letter from the King 
bidding him join him before the 21st in order that 
he might help to cry '' Vive le Roi " in Paris. 

Ever since the conversion of Henry, the Politi- 
cians and the more moderate and patriotic members 
of the League would gladly have thrown open the 
gates of Paris to a Catholic and national king. 
Mayenne on the other hand had drawn closer to the 
Spaniards, both because he felt their support to be 
more necessary to him and because they encouraged 
him to hope that Philip might marry the Infanta to 
his son. 

The Lieutenant-General of the Union felt the 
ground trembling under his feet. He strengthened 
the garrison, re-established the Council of Sixteen, 
the committee of public safety of the League, per- 
fected the organisation of the " minotiers," — a militia 
recruited by Spanish money from the lowest classes 
to overawe the more respectable citizens, and ban- 
ished some of the most prominent of the Moderate 
party. Since Belin, the Governor of Paris, had not 
scrupled to say that he was French and not Spanish 
and that the time was come to end the Civil War, he 
was dismissed and his place given to Brissac, the hero 
of the Barricades, a favourite of the democratic fac- 
tion. The study of antiquity had converted Brissac 
to Republicanism in theory, but his actions were 



278 Henry of Navarre. [1592- 

solely determined by the intelligent pursuit of his 
own interests. He was not, therefore, likely to be 
scrupulous in fidelity to a losing cause ; yet Mayenne, 
who never allowed his own conduct to be hampered 
by the most solemn engagements, trusted Brissac's 
word, showing that strange infatuation which not 
unfrequently exposes a swindler to be cheated more 
easily than an honest man. Feria was convinced 
that a man could not be dangerous, who, instead of 
listening to what passed in Council, amused himself 
by catching the flies on the wall ; and the legate felt 
that confidence was not misplaced in a Catholic so 
scrupulous, that he cast himself on his knees to crave 
absolution after an interview with his brother-in- 
law, the Royalist St. Luc, — an interview which, 
Brissac asserted, was rendered necessary by a law- 
suit, in which his whole fortune was at stake, but 
which really was to settle the price of his desertion. 

During the next six weeks (January and Febru- 
ary, 1594), each day brought the news of further 
disaster to the cause of the League ; of fortresses 
and towns returning to their allegiance. At length 
the Spaniards sent some troops to the frontier and 
on March 6th, Mayenne left Paris with the avowed in- 
tention of attempting with their help to open a way 
by which supplies might reach the Capital. But since 
he took his wife and children with him, his departure 
appeared little less than a retreat from an untenable 
position, and gave a great impulse to the negotia- 
tions carried on by the King's friends within and 
without the walls. 

Brissac was not more faithful to the League than 



1595] The King Enters Paris. 279 

his predecessor, while his dissimulation and the trust 
reposed in him made him far more dangerous. The 
price he exacted from the King for his services was 
a high one, 20,000 crowns down, and a pension of 
20,000, the confirmation of the dignity of Marshal 
bestowed on him by Mayenne, and the governorship 
of Corbeil and Mantes. The Parisian magistrates, 
who joined in the plot for opening the gates of the 
city to the King, deserve the praise of disinterested- 
ness in comparison v/ith the Catholic nobles. But 
few stipulated for private favours. The conditions 
upon which they insisted were such as they sup- 
posed to be for the public good. The maintenance 
of the privileges of Paris ; the prohibition of Prot- 
estant worship within ten leagues of the walls ; a 
general amnesty and permission to the foreigners in 
the town to depart uninjured. Since they had been 
invited and received as friends it would have been a 
treacherous breach of hospitahty to have delivered 
the Spaniards into the hands of their enemies. 

After the terms had been agreed upon, daybreak 
on the morning of March 22d was fixed upon as the 
time when the King and his troops should be ad- 
mitted. A large force could not assemble near the 
gates without attracting the attention of the Span- 
iards and of the Sixteen whose suspicions were al- 
ready aroused. Henry IV. was obliged to venture 
into the narrow and tortuous streets of the populous 
city with some 4,000 or 5,000 men. The Spaniards 
with their armed and disciplined adherents were at 
least three times as numerous. The safety and 
success of the King depended therefore, in the first 



28o Henry of Navarre, [1592- 

place, on the good faith and skilful arrangements of 
his friends within the walls, and in the next, on the 
sympathy, if not on the active co-operation, of the 
citizens. 

The plan of the Royalists was well conceived and 
punctually executed. Never, perhaps, has a large 
and unruly city, held by a powerful garrison, changed 
hands with so little disorder or bloodshed. 

Brissac on various pretexts got rid of two French 
regiments whom he knew to be devoted to May- 
enne, and persuaded the most energetic of the 
Spanish commanders to leave the town, in the hopes 
of intercepting an imaginary convoy. At the same 
time he enrolled as new recruits a number of Roy- 
alist soldiers who slipped one by one into the city. 

Feria and Ibarra were warned that the King would 
enter Paris on the night of the 2ist; but their in- 
formant assured them that midnight was the ap- 
pointed hour and appears only to have suggested 
a possible complicity on the part of the Governor. 
Feria accordingly, shortly before midnight, warned 
Brissac to be on his guard, and sent his Spanish cap- 
tains to visit the gates in his company. They were 
ordered to stab him at the first sign of hesitation or 
treachery. Brissac hurried them from post to post 
till they were tired out, and brought them back to 
Feria, well satisfied of his zeal and fidelity. Mean- 
while all the trainbands, whom the Royalists could 
trust, had been quietly got underarms. They were 
told that peace had been concluded between May- 
enne and the King, that it would be proclaimed on 
the morrow, but that it was necessary to antici- 



1595] The King Enters Paris. 281 

pate and prevent the resistance of the Spaniards and 
their adherents. 

Brissac and the Provost of Paris, L'HuiUier, ac- 
companied by a strong body of citizens, seized the 
Porte Neuve — the gate on the bank of the river, by 
the Louvre. The gates of St. Denis and St. Honore 
were held by other magistrates privy to the plot, 
and the commandant of the Arsenal allowed the 
chain to be lowered which barred the river, so as to 
admit by water the garrisons of Corbeil and Melun. 
The Royalist troops entered the town from four 
sides, and then uniting with their friends, who had 
collected to hold and open the gates, occupied the 
great arteries which divided the labyrinth of narrow 
and crooked lanes, — the streets of St. Denis, St. 
Honore and St. Martin. Then converging they 
marched upon the centre of the city where their 
friends were astir, and where they met with no resist- 
ance. When the Spaniards took the alarm they 
found themselves surrounded in their several quarters 
and deprived of any possibility of concerted action. 

With the last of four bodies of troops which en- 
tered the Capital by the Porte Neuve came Henry 
himself. The Provost and Governor were waiting 
to welcome him at that same gate through which 
six years before the last Valois had fled, pursued by 
the execrations of his people. 

The King received the keys of the town from 
the Provost, and embraced Brissac, saluting him by 
the title of Marshal, while he threw his own white 
scarf over his neck. The division which had 
entered immediately before the King, alone met 



282 Henry of Navarre. [1592- 

with any resistance. As it moved along the quays 
a small detachment of lansquenets, stationed on the 
Quai de I'Ecole, refused to surrender, but were 
promptly put to the sword or thrown into the river. 
Henry heard the noise of the skirmish, and, as he 
had entered the gate unarmed, called for his armour. 
For a moment, fearless soldier as he was, he hesi- 
tated to enter the gloomy streets which had so often 
been the scene of riot and bloodshed fatal to his 
friends and to the authority of his predecessors. But 
assured that his soldiers held the gates, that his ad- 
herents were in possession of the city, the Louvre 
and the twoChatelets, he proceeded along the street 
of St. Honore towards the bridge of Notre Dame. 
The people crowded the street in silent curiosity and 
amazement at the unexpected sight, while the King 
advanced surrounded by his escort, trailing their 
pikes in sign of peace. Taking their clue from the 
shouts of the better class of citizens, first one and 
then another of the mob raised the cry of '^ Vive le 
Roi." Before the bridge was reached, the infection 
of enthusiasm had spread and the air rang with loyal 
acclamations. '' I see," said Henry, '' how these 
poor people have been tyrannised." Then, turning 
to a former Leaguer who was by his side, he asked, 
" What think you of seeing me here ? " " That what 
is Caesar's, Sire, has been given to Caesar." — '* Given," 
said the King, looking at Brissac, who rode near him, 
*' Given ! no, sold and for a good price." 

When he approached Notre Dame and saw the 
clergy waiting under the great portal to receive him, 
he dismounted. The throng was so great that he 



1595] The King Enters Paris, 283 

was lifted off his feet. The guards would have 
made the people stand back, but Henry prevented 
them ; the citizens, he said, had long missed the 
sight of a King, and should now look their fill. It 
was no small risk which he thus ran in exposing 
himself to the blow of any frenzied fanatic. When 
the Duchess of Montpensier was told that he 
had entered Paris, she exclaimed that surely 
some one w^ould be found to plunge a dagger into 
his heart. 

Meantime the bells pealed forth a joyous wel- 
come, while the Te Deum re-echoed through the 
nave and aisles of the crowded cathedral. 

Some futile attempt made by the Sixteen to rally 
their forces in the quarter of the university where 
they were strongest was repressed without blood- 
shed ; and the King's heralds, accompanied by a 
shouting crowd of boys and children, rode through 
the town, proclaiming peace and amnesty. 

The Duke of Feria and Don Diego Ibarra were 
glad to accept the terms offered by the King, and 
to evacuate the city with bag and baggage and 
the honors of war. At three o'clock, pelted by a 
pitiless March storm, 3,000 Spaniards, Italians and 
Walloons filed through the gate of St. Denis. The 
King, who had dined, was watching them from a 
window above the gate. Feria and Ibarra under 
circumstances which might have made other men 
feel and look sufficiently crestfallen, were sustained 
by their Castilian pride, and barely saluted him 
whom they still affected to call the Prince of Beam. 
Henry returned a lower bow and shouted, " Com- 



284 Henry of Navarre, [1592- 

mend me to your master, gentlemen, but don't 
come back." The other officers and the common 
soldiers, less proud, or more grateful for being 
allowed to depart with life and property, passed 
under the King's window bareheaded and with low 
obeisance. 

Fifty or sixty of the most rabid Leaguers accom- 
panied the Spaniards. The legate, who refused to 
see the King, was allowed to take with him the 
Rector of the Jesuits, and a priest who had insti- 
gated the would-be regicide, Barriere. 

Henry IV. declared that he was determined to 
forget the past ; that it would be as unreasonable 
to hold the fanatics responsible for what they had 
done, as to blame a man who was beside himself for 
striking, or a madman for walking about naked, — 
a generous and politic sentiment, if not carried 
too far. But, as has already been remarked, a well 
founded confidence in his boundless placabiHty, 
doubtless encouraged the intrigues and conspiracies 
which disturbed Henry IV's reign and confirmed 
the French princes and nobles in the belief that 
rebellion was a game in which there was much to 
win and little to lose. 

The evening of his first day in Paris the King not 
only visited the mother of Mayenne, the old Duchess 
of Nemours, and the widowed Duchess of Guise, to 
assure them of his favour and protection, but even 
joined the card party of the Duchess of Mont- 
pensier, the termagant of the League, the patroness 
of Jacques Clement, and who a few hours before 
had been calling for some one to assassinate him. 




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1595] The King Enters Paris. 285 

Surely he had the right to forgive his own ene- 
mies, but, muttered the old servants of Henry III., 
was it thus he kept the oath he had sworn to avenge 
the murder of his predecessor ? 

The possession of Paris, followed in a few days 
by the news of the submission of Rouen, firmly* 
established the King's superiority over his enemies. 
There was now little danger that the hope of ob- 
taining the support of a dying faction would tempt 
any prince to play the part of a pretender. The 
Parliament, without awaiting the return of the 
Royalist magistrates from Tours, eagerly annulled 
all that had been done during the last six years ''to 
the prejudice of the authority of the Crown or of 
the laws of the country," and summoned the Duke 
of Mayenne and all others at once to recognise 
Henry IV. as their lawful King, unless they chose 
to incur the penalty of treason. 

Even the University of Paris, so long the 
stronghold of opinions which subordinated the 
hereditary right of the Prince to the popular will, 
and to the approval of the Church, yielded to the 
pressure of circumstances and to the persuasion of 
anew Rector, the King's physician. The Sorbonne 
solemnly declared that, '* notwithstanding the doubts 
of certain men imbued with erroneous doctrine," 
Henry of Bourbon, the legitimate heir to the 
throne, must be obeyed by all ; even though, owing 
to the intrigues of the enemies of the country, he 
had not as yet been recognised as the Eldest Son of 
the Church by the Holy Father. ''All power," as 
St. Paul teaches, " is of God. The Powers that be 



286 Henry of Navarre. [1592- 

are ordained of God, and they that resist shall 
receive to themselves damnation." 

But much remained to be done. The leaders of 
the League, who continued in arms, must be con- 
ciHated or subdued ; and if the King was to rule as 
an orthodox and Catholic monarch, if no pretext 
for disobedience was to be left to his subjects, he 
must be acknowledged by the Pope. 

In the North, Laon, Soissons, Amiens and Beau- 
vais were held by Mayenne and Aumale, supported 
by the Spaniards at La Fere. The Duke of Guise 
was still master of Rheims and of the greater part 
of Champagne. Chalons, Dijon and most of the 
towns of Burgundy, though weary of the war, and 
anxious to return to their allegiance, were coerced 
by the garrisons of Mayenne. In the South, Tou- 
louse and a considerable part of Languedoc were 
still unsubdued. 

In Provence the Leaguers had acknowledged 
Henry's title, but were still in arms against the Duke 
of Epernon, the Governor. So universal was the 
discontent excited by the outrages of his Gascon 
mercenaries, and by Epernon's own avarice or 
cruelty, that the King was obliged to allow Lesdi- 
guieres to send assistance from Dauphiny to the 
men who were resisting his representative. The 
Duke, who protested that, rather than lose his 
government, he would sell himself to Spain or the 
Devil, began in revenge to negotiate with Philip II. 

The exhaustion and misery of the country were 
greater than ever. Plains once rich with harvest 
were rapidly becoming barren moors or fever-stricken 



1595] The King Enters Paris. 287 

morasses. The wretched peasantry, driven by des- 
peration and want, banded themselves together and 
became in their turn the robbers of those who still 
had something left. In the Limousin, Quercy and 
La Marche 50,000 men were in arms under the 
name of *' Croquants." Partly by force, but more 
by policy, the royal governors dispersed these bands 
before the movement spread into Poitou. 

When there were such troubles in the heart of the 
kingdom, and so many rebels and traitors in all the 
frontier provinces, the King of Spain might well 
hope that even if he could not seat the Infanta on 
the French throne, he might easily find sufficient 
employment for Henry IV. at home to prevent his 
becoming troublesome abroad. 

The power of Spain was most dangerous on the 
northern frontier, and Mayenne was at Laon urgently 
pressing the Governor of the Netherlands, the Arch- 
duke Ernest, to send his troops into Picardy. Henry, 
therefore, marched in person against Laon, that hill 
fortress, which had been the capital of those Caro- 
lingians from whom the genealogists of the Guises 
derived their patron's claim to the throne. 

Laon surrendered on August 2 (1594), but not 
without much loss to the besiegers. Givry, the 
gallant gentleman who had done Henry such good 
service on the day of his accession, was one of those 
who fell. A fortnight later, Amiens and the other 
Picard towns submitted. 

The lieutenant of Guise in Champagne, a soldier 
of fortune, who, although the son of a gamekeeper, 
called himself St. Pol and Duke of Rethelois, treated 



288 Henry of Navarre. ti592- 

the Duke with insolent independence. In an alter- 
cation between them he laid his hand on the hilt of 
his sword, but before he could draw it, fell stabbed 
to the heart by Guise. The dead man's mercenaries 
at once opened the gates of the towns they garri- 
soned to the Royalists. The Duchess of Guise, won 
by the King's courtesy, urged her son while it was 
yet time to accept the generous terms offered : 
400,000 crowns to pay his debts, pensions for him- 
self and his brothers, and the government of Pro- 
vence in exchange for that of Champagne. 

The family of Lorraine imagined that their descent 
from King Rene of Anjou gave them an hereditary 
claim to Provence, which was not less a frontier prov- 
ince and exposed to Spanish aggression and intrigue 
than Champagne. The majority, therefore, of the 
Royal Council protested against the policy of en- 
trusting it to the young man whom the King's 
enemies had put forward as a pretender to the 
Crown. But the event proved the wisdom of 
Henry's decision. Guise, though young and fiery, 
had a reserve of sober sense. In the days of his 
popularity he had checked the foolish adulation of 
the rabble, and had threatened to kill with his own 
hand any one who addressed him as King. Eper- 
non indeed, immediately on hearing that Guise had 
been appointed governor, concluded his treaty with 
Philip II., and persuaded the Leaguist magistrates 
of Marseilles to follow his example. Marseilles, the 
one great port between Barcelona and Genoa, had 
long been the object of Spanish ambition. Carlo 
Doria, with a Spanish fleet, was already in the 



1595] The King Entei^s Paris, 289 

harbour, when a conspiracy and a rising concerted 
between Guise and the townspeople, who detested 
the yoke of Spain, drove the foreigners and their 
supporters from the town. It was no small triumph 
for Henry of Bourbon to have turned the son of 
the hero of the League into an instrument of his 
anti-Spanish policy. (Feb. 17, 1596.) 

The Duke of Lorraine followed the example of his 
young kinsman, abandoned the League, disbanded 
his army and restored Toul and Verdun to France 
for 900,000 crowns. 

After the submission of the Duke of Guise and 
the treaty with Lorraine, the only members of 
the Lotharingian family whose hostility was still 
formidable to Henry IV. were the Dukes of May- 
enne and Mercceur. These nobles, although they 
could no longer hope to deprive him of the Crown, 
still trusted to be able to convert their Governments 
of Burgundy and Brittany into hereditary and inde- 
pendent principalities. The support of Spain gave 
them courage and strength to continue their rebel- 
lion ; the fact that the King was still unabsolved by 
the Pope supplied a pretext. 

In all the difficulties and dangers which he had 
encountered, Henry traced the persistent malevo- 
lence of his hereditary enemy, Philip II. To hurl 
defiance against the dreaded tyrant by an open decla- 
ration of w^ar v/ould not only satisfy his personal re- 
sentment, but might also be justified as politically 
expedient. Whether war was declared or not, it could 
not be doubted that Philip II. would do France all 

the injury possible. But the less Henry IV. appeared 
19 



290 Henry of Navarre, [1592- 

to fear him, the less dangerous would he be. Much 
of his power to do harm depended on the dread 
inspired by the name of Spain, a dread based more 
on her old renown than on her present strength. 
Moreover, when once war had been declared, it 
would be impossible for Frenchmen any longer to 
pretend that in placing themselves under the pro- 
tection of Philip II. they were not allying themselves 
with the enemy of their country. Henry's Protestant 
allies suspected him, since his abjuration, of a wish 
to come to terms with Spain at their expense. Open 
hostility would be the best reply to such suspicions. 
The English and Dutch promised that they would 
find Philip II. such occupation elsewhere, that it 
would be impossible for his armies to invade France. 
The Duke of Bouillon was certain that by means of 
his friends in Luxembourg, and other Spanish prov- 
inces, he would be able to do wonders for the King's 
service. Sancy boasted that he could induce the 
Swiss not only to connive at, but even actively to 
assist in, the conquest of Franche Comte, although 
they had guaranteed the neutrality of that province. 
Gabrielle d'Estrees, who had persuaded Henry to 
acknowledge and -legitimise her recently born son, 
Caesar, supported the war party. If Franche Comt^ 
was conquered, she hoped that it would be bestowed 
on him as an appanage. 

Yielding to these arguments as well as to his 
own indignation, Henry determined on open war 
and closed his ears to Sully and other more cautious 
advisers, who urged him to wait till he had consoli- 
dated his power at home, before by an open defiance 



1595] The King Enters Paris. 291 

he roused the old King to exert to the utmost 
his still formidable resources. The Spanish mon- 
archy was like some mighty beast of chase which, 
bleeding from many wounds and apparently ex- 
hausted, may yet, if the hunter approach too 
incautiously, gather its failing energies at the touch 
of his weapon and perish not unavenged. 




CHAPTER Vri. 

OPEN WAR WITH SPAIN — PEACE WITH FOREIGN AND 
DOMESTIC ENEMIES — THE EDICT OF NANTES. 

1595-1598. 




EFORE the Spaniards were met in the 
field, it was necessary to deal with a 
domestic enemy scarcely less danger- 
ous. 

The Jesuits, alleging the traditional 
respect of their order for the Holy 
See, refused to offer up prayers in their churches 
for an excommunicated Prince. 

It was not true that the Society of Jesus had been 
founded, as was pretended by their French oppo- 
nents, to make the Church subservient to the ambi- 
tion of the Spanish King. The primary object of 
Loyola and of his successors had been to maintain 
and to extend the authority of the Roman Church ; 
to advance her frontiers over the realms of heathen- 
dom as well as to defend them against the encroach- 
ments of heresy. It was because, in the main, the 
policy of Philip II. had not been inconsistent with 
this object, because his enemies had also been the 

292 



open War with Spain. 293 

enemies of Romanisn, and not because the founder 
and the first generals of the Order had been the sub- 
jects of Spain, that the Jesuits had been the close 
allies of the Spanish King. They had been intro- 
duced into France by Henry 11. at a time when 
he had determined to join the crusade against heresy. 
The rapid increase of their numbers, the crowds 
who flocked to their churches, the popularity of their 
schools, the noble and wealthy penitents who showed 
by large gifts and bequests their gratitude for the 
skill with which the fathers ministered to the 
diseases of the soul, increased the jealousy and sus- 
picion with which they were from the first regarded 
by the constituted authorities in Church and State. 
The Parliaments resented their assertion of papal 
supremacy and their attacks upon the absolute 
authority of the Crown. The higher clergy, not less 
anxious than the lawyers to maintain the liberties 
of the Galilean church, were further incensed by the 
immunity claimed by the Jesuits from episcopal 
jurisdiction. The older orders were irritated by their 
popularity, their assumption of a name which seemed 
to imply that they were the truer and more famiHar 
servants of the common Master. The University of 
Paris was jealous of their educational success, and 
after affiliating on certain conditions their College 
of Clermont, was even more indignant that the 
popularity of their instruction should attract the 
vast majority of students belonging to the higher 
classes, than it was at the non-fulfilment of the 
stipulated terms. In 1565 the University, supported 
by the Bishop and Clergy of Paris, as well as by the 



294 Henry of Navarre. [1595- 



municipality, ordered the Jesuits to close their lec- 
ture rooms. An appeal to the law-courts followed. 
Notwithstanding the ill-will of the lawyers, the 
support of powerful friends obtained for the Jesuits 
the permission of Parliament to continue their 
teaching, pending the final decision of their case and 
indefinitely postponed that decision. While the 
League flourished, the Jesuits had been all powerful 
in the University as well as elsewhere. But the old 
quarrel between the Order and the University re- 
mained in suspense, and appeared to the King's 
advisers to supply a convenient weapon against his 
most insidious enemies. The new Rector persuaded 
the Faculties to reopen the litigation. Not satisfied 
with demanding that the Jesuits should be forbidden 
to teach, he asked that they should be banished 
from the kingdom as the spies and tools of Spain. 
The case against the Society was argued at great 
length, with much eloquence and more learning by 
counsel representing the University and the paro- 
chial clergy of Paris. The advocate of the Univer- 
sity was Antoine Arnauld, the father of a son of 
like name, destined to win undying fame in battle 
against the same antagonists. 

Arnauld exaggerated the subservience of the 
Jesuits to Spain, but not the irreconcilable antago- 
nism between the principles of the Order and Galli- 
canism. The Galilean Church had always maintained 
the supreme authority of oecumenical councils in 
things spiritual, and the independence in its own 
sphere of the temporal power. The Jesuits on the 
other hand taught that the Pope when he spoke as 



1598] Open War with Spain. 295 

Christ's vicar was the supreme and infallible head of 
the Church, and that an excommunicated Prince 
was a tyrant, to whom his subjects not only owed 
no allegiance, but whom any might lawfully slay. 

To the charges of having violated every condition 
imposed upon them when admitted into the king- 
dom, of aiming at the subversion of the national 
laws in Church and State, of instigating rebellion 
and assassination, were added those other accusa- 
tions to which, whether more or less founded, it has 
been the misfortune of the Order to be at all times 
exposed. 

* The counsel of the parochial clergy dwelt on 
the sinister characteristic which distinguished the 
Jesuits from other monastic bodies. The statutes 
and rules of the older Orders were fixed and 
immutable, while theirs could be changed or sus- 
pended by their superiors as season, place and 
circumstances might be thought to require. Yet 
so great was the influence of the Order, so numer- 
ous and powerful their friends, that they probably 
would have escaped condemnation but for an event 
which excited great popular feeling against them. 

On November 27 (1594) after the King, on his 
return from a journey, had entered the house of 
Gabrielle d'Estrees, a young man slipped in, unper- 
ceived among the crowd of courtiers, rushed forward 
and struck at him with a knife. The blow might 
have been fatal if at the very moment Henry had 
not stooped forward to raise two gentlemen who had 
been presented to him and who were kneeling, ac- 
cording to custom, to clasp his knees. As it was, 



296 Henry of Navarre. [1595- 

his upper lip was cut through and his mouth wound- 
ed. The would-be assassin proved to be a youth, 
Jean Chastel by name, a pupil of the Jesuits, whose 
weak intellect had been shaken by the discipline and 
the threats of damnation with which they had at- 
tempted to cure his moral depravity. He hoped 
by some deed of conspicuous merit to escape the 
punishment of his sins ; nay, to exchange the pains 
of hell for the crown of martyrdom, should he perish 
in the endeavour to deliver his church and country 
from an excommunicated tyrant. 

The attempt to assassinate the King was certain 
to produce consequences so inconvenient to the 
Jesuits, that they must be absolved from the charge 
of having directly incited the murderer. But they 
who excuse and glorify crime, cannot refuse responsi- 
bility for the fruits of their doctrine. The men who 
had exalted Jaques Clement as a saint and martyr 
were not less guilty than if they had placed the 
knife in Jean Chastel's hand. The Parliament no 
longer hesitated. On the same day that Jean Chas- 
tel was sentenced to suffer the barbarous punishment 
inflicted on regicides — his flesh to be lacerated with 
red-hot pincers, his right hand to be struck off, his 
limbs to be torn asunder by four horses — the Jesuits 
were banished from Paris and the kingdom. ''It 
seems," jested the King, '' that the reverend fathers 
could only be convicted by my mouth." There is 
no more convincing proof of the imperturbable se- 
renity and healthy elasticity of Henry's tempera- 
ment than the fact that it was not warped by the 
ever present danger of assassination, a strain under 



1598] Open War with Spain. 297 

which so many not ignoble natures have given 
way. Soon after his accession he wrote to his mis- 
tress that the number of men suborned to attempt 
his life was greater than could easily be believed. 
But God, he added, would keep him. He could 
scarcely be persuaded to take the commonest pre- 
cautions. Yet it was with a sad and depressed coun- 
tenance that he rode to Notre Dame to offer thanks 
for his escape. When a courtier called his atten- 
tion to the popular enthusiasm, he shook his head 
and replied, " They are a mob \C'est un peuple] ; if 
my greatest enemy was where I am, and they saw 
him pass, they would do as much for him as for me, 
and shout even louder." 

On January 17 (1595), war was declared against 
Spain. The Duke of Bouillon (Turenne) had at his 
own suggestion been sent to invade Luxembourg. 
The Duke of Montmorency, on whom the King had 
bestowed the sword of Constable, condescended to 
show his gratitude by leaving his province of Lan- 
guedoc to drive Nemours, and an army sent to his 
assistance by the Duke of Savoy, from the neigh- 
bourhood of Lyons. But it was in Burgundy and 
Franche-Comte that the King hoped to strike a 
decisive blow. Burgundy was the province in which 
Mayenne trusted, even if the rest of France slipped 
from his grasp, to establish himself as an indepen- 
dent ruler. Franche-Comte was an outlying portion 
of the Spanish dominions, inhabited by a French- 
speaking population, which the King thought 
might form an appanage for Gabrielle's little son, 
recently created Duke of Vendome. But money 



298 Henry of Navarre. [1595- 

was needed to carry on the war. The disorganisa- 
tion of the administration, not less than the exhaus- 
tion and misery of the country, made it very difficult 
to obtain the necessary resources. However reluc- 
tant to impose new burdens on his people, the King 
could not begin the campaign with an empty 
treasury, and took the remonstrances of the Chambre 
des Comptes on the measures adopted in no good 
part. They raised objections, he told them, but 
suggested no other means whereby he could support 
his armies. If they had each offered him 2,000 or 
3,000 crowns, or advised him to take their salaries, 
there would have been no need of these new edicts. 
He was not less outspoken to the Parliament, the 
fervour of whose new loyalty had not been strong 
enough to overcome their inveterate habit of seek- 
ing to exalt their own importance, by criticising and 
delaying the measures sent to them for registration. 
"You have," he said, "kept me waiting these three 
months, and I am now going to my army, as ill 
provided as ever Prince was. You will shortly see 
the injury you have done me. There are three 
hostile armies in my kingdom. I shall seek them 
out and I trust to bring them to account. I shall 
freely expose my life. God will not desert me. He 
has miraculously called me to the throne and as- 
sisted me till now. He will continue to help me. 
He does not leave His works imperfect. ... Be 
as careful of what concerns the Commonwealth as 
you are of your own interests. Do your duty. Be- 
ware lest the venom of passion enter the heart. 
France is the man, Paris is the heart. I love you 



1598] Open War with Spain. 299 

as much as King can love. My words are not of 
two colours. What I have in my mouth I have in 
my heart. It is the nature of the French not to 
love what they see. When you no longer see me 
you will love me ; and when you have lost me you 
will regret me." 

The King was eager to join his troops in Bur- 
gundy. Bouillon feebly supported by the Dutch 
had effected nothing in Luxembourg; but the Duke 
of Longueville, Governor of Picardy, had overrun 
Artois, defeating the Spanish governor of that prov- 
ince, and, since the Archduke Ernest, Governor of the 
Netherlands, had recently died (February 20th), it 
was supposed that the Spaniards would not, during 
that spring, attempt to do more than hold their own 
on the Flemish frontier. 

The younger Biron, who, since his father's death 
had received the staff of Marshal and the govern- 
ment of Burgundy, had been sent to take possession 
of his province. Assisted by the inhabitants, he had 
driven Mayenne's garrisons from town after town, 
and by the end of May had obtained possession of 
the city of Dijon, although the citadel was still held 
by Mayenne's soldiers. 

Don Fernan de Velasco, Constable of Castile and 
Governor of Milan, was ordered by his master to 
collect forthwith all the forces he possibly could, 
and to drive the French troops which had crossed 
the frontiers out of Franche-Comte. Velasco with 
10,000 men easily compelled the Lotharingian mer- 
cenaries, who, as yet, were the only French army in 
the country, to retreat. He boasted that the Prince of 



300 Henry of Navarre, [1595- 

Bearn should rue his impertinent defiance of Spain, 
threatening to devastate France with fire and sword. 
Mayenne had joined him with an inconsiderable 
force, all that was left of the army of the League. 

Biron urged the King to hasten to his assistance. 
Henry, who left Paris on May 30th reached Dijon on 
June 4th, the very day on which the Constable of Cas- 
tile was preparing to cross the Saone, which divided 
the county from the duchy of Burgundy, the terri- 
tory of the empire from that of France, at a little 
town called Gray, eight leagues from Dijon. 

The King and Biron determined to take up a 
strong position at Lux, half way between Dijon and 
Gray, with their infantry, and to delay with their 
cavalry the advance of the enemy, till their position 
was entrenched and the siege works round the citadel 
of Dijon strengthened. Henry, who was without 
any certain information of the Spaniard's movements, 
sent Biron forward with a small detachment of cav- 
alry to discover whether some troops reported by 
his scouts to be advancing, were an isolated body of 
cavalry or the advanced guard of Velasco's army. 

After passing Fontaine Fran^aise, a village not far 
from the frontier, Biron was met by an officer pre- 
viously detached by the King, to discover the 
enemy's position, who assured the Marshal that their 
army was nowhere near ; that the cavalry in front of 
them were only some two hundred men with whom 
he had been engaged. Upon this, Biron at once 
sent word to Henry that he might safely advance, 
and himself hurried forward with his men, putting to 
flight some fifty or sixty skirmishers whom he met 



1598] Open War with Spain. 301 

as he pressed on to the summit of a hill midway be- 
tween Fontaine Frangaise and Sainte Seine, another 
hamlet close to the frontier. From the top of the 
hill he commanded a wider view, and soon saw that 
he was on the point of being surrounded by a large 
force of cavalry supported by infantry. " Would I 
were dead," he exclaimed, '' I have sent for the King 
and here is the whole Spanish army." He at once 
tried to fall back so as to warn the King, but was 
furiously charged by the enemy. Wounded in face 
and belly, covered with blood and dust, he main- 
tained himself against ever increasing odds, till Henry 
came up. Even then but two or three hundred 
French horsemen were collected, while the enemy 
were four times as numerous. The King without 
stopping to put on his breastplate charged and drove 
back Biron's assailants, and then, a few more of his 
men having come up, attacked in succession, and 
with such fury, three squadrons of the enemy's horse, 
each more numerous than his own, that he drove 
them back in confusion to seek the support of their 
infantry. 

Four hundred Spanish men-at-arms had not been 
engaged. Mayenne urged Velasco to cut off the 
King's retreat with his infantry, and to allow him to 
lead the whole of the cavalry against the handful of 
French, who were exhausted by their repeated 
charges. If this were done, the defeat and probably 
the death or captivity of the King would be the re- 
sult. But the Constable of Castile could not believe 
that the King would have been so foolhardy were 
not his army close at hand. 



^02 Henry of Navarre. [1595- 

While the enemy's generals debated, new bodies 
of French horse were constantly gathering round 
their King, who soon found himself too strong to 
fear an attack. On the next day Velasco recrossed 
the Saone, deaf to Mayenne's entreaties that he 
would at least make some attempt to reheve the 
citadel of Dijon. Mayenne had no personal animosity 
to the King and had long cordially detested his 
Spanish allies. As they would do nothing to assist 
him he gladly acquiesced in a suggestion secretly 
made to him by Henry, that he should retire to 
Chalons, the only important town he still held in 
Burgundy, and remain there quiet and unmolested 
till they could come to terms. 

The so-called battle of Fontaine Frangaise, was 
only a brilliant cavalry skirmish, but by removing 
any inclination Velasco may have had to invade 
France, by securing Burgundy and determining the 
submission of Mayenne, it was as useful as the gain of 
a pitched battle. Henry, by his headlong bravery, 
no doubt imperilled a life of inestimable value to his 
country, but it was at the price of such risk that he 
maintained the reputation for chivalrous courage, 
which gave him his chief hold on the loyalty and 
affection of the French gentry. 

During the next two months, the royal army 
wasted Franche-Comte without provoking the Span- 
iards to meet them in the field. The Swiss cantons, 
guarantors of the neutrality of the County, had 
been tempted to acquiesce in the French invasion 
by a promise that, if conquered, the province should 
be formed into a semi-independent state under their 



1598] Open War with Spain. 303 

suzerainty. But reflecting how idle this suzerainty 
would be, they now alleged ancient treaties, and 
summoned Henry to withdraw his forces. He was 
anxious not to offend such useful allies, perhaps also, 
since his presence and his resources were urgently 
required in another quarter, glad of an honourable 
pretext for withdrawing from an arduous adventure 
too lightly undertaken. 

Longueville, the Governor of Picardy, died soon 
after his success in Artois, and was succeeded by 
his brother-in-law, the Count of St. Pol. Philip H. 
strained every nerve to enable the Count of Fuentes, 
his commander in the Low Countries, to carry on 
offensive operations with a chance of success. 
Fuentes entered Picardy with 10,000 veteran troops 
and after taking Catelet laid siege to Doullens. 
Admiral Villars, the brave and able defender of 
Rouen, and the Duke of Nevers were ordered to 
hasten with the forces they commanded into Nor- 
mandy and Champagne to the assistance of the 
Count of St. Pol and of the Duke of Bouillon in 
Picardy. Bouillon, always impatient of an equal 
and insubordinate to a superior, quarrelled with 
Villars and was anxious to achieve something deci- 
sive before the arrival of Nevers, to whom the King 
had entrusted the chief command. Supported by 
St. Pol he insisted that the relief of Doullens should 
at once be attempted and would not hsten to Villars 
who urged caution and the prudence of awaiting 
the hourly expected approach of Nevers and his 
army. 

The result was a most crushing defeat (July 24, 



304 Henry of Navarre. [1596- 



1595), 3,000 Frenchmen, and among them 600 men of 
quahty, were killed. Villars, after fighting bravely 
and with perhaps too much pertinacity, was taken 
prisoner and put to death in cold blood by the 
Spaniards as a '' traitor." Doullens shortly after fell 
(July 31st). The atrocities which accompanied the 
sack of the town were marked by that cold-blooded 
devilry in which the Spanish troops surpassed all 
rivals. 

Bouillon, far from learning modesty in defeat, lost 
no opportunity of thwarting Nevers, who had joined 
his colleagues a few hours after the rout. No 
attempt was made to prevent Fuentes from laying 
siege to Cambray with 18,000 soldiers besides 5,000 
sappers and 72 cannon, a most formidable park of 
artillery for those days. Cambray, a free Imperial 
city, had been taken in 1581 by the Duke of Anjou, 
who had placed a certain Balagny, bastard of 
Monluc, Bishop of Valence, in command of the town 
and garrison. 

On the 2d of October while the garrison was on 
the walls expecting an assault, the townspeople 
seized one of the gates and admitted Fuentes, who 
had promised to restore and respect the ancient 
privileges and liberties of the city. A week later 
the citadel in which Balagny and the French had 
taken refuge capitulated. 

On hearing that Cambray was threatened, Henry 
hurried from Lyons towards the North-western 
frontier. 

When Henry reached his army, he found the 
Spaniards in Cambray, and the French frontier- 



1598] Open War with Spain. 305 

towns panic-stricken. Collecting all his resources 
and assisted by the Dutch with 2,000 men and the 
pay for 2,000 more, the King laid siege to La Fere, 
a Picard fortress surrendered by the League as 
the price of Spanish help, and in which great stores 
of warlike material and provisions had been accumu- 
lated by Fuentes. 

The siege of La Fere continued throughout the 
winter. Meantime the leaders of the League found 
in the absolution of Henry by the Pope, a decent 
pretext for withdrawing from a hopeless contest. 

Dislike of Spain, which he shared with the other 
Italian princes, the warm intercession of Venice 
and of the Duke of Florence, the advice of his con- 
fessor Baronius and of his minister Cardinal Toleto, 
led Clement VIIL to regret the harshness with 
which he had rejected the French King's overtures. 
It was an indication of his changed disposition that 
he authorised the monastic orders in France to men- 
tion the King in their prayers. 

Notwithstanding the expulsion of their order 
from Paris and Northern France, the most influen- 
tial Jesuits agreed with Toleto in approving of a 
conciliatory policy. Partly because they thus hoped 
to make their peace with the French Court and to 
obtain the revocation of the sentence of banish- 
ment, partly because the alliance of the order with 
Spain had broken down. Philip II. only tolerated 
the Jesuits with their secret and powerful organisa- 
tion so long as they were thoroughly Spanish. In 
1573, a Spanish Jew was about to be elected general. 
The party in the order opposed to Spain brought 



3o6 Heitry of Navarre. [1595- 

about his rejection. Henceforth PhiHp regarded 
the order with dislike as a mere instrument of the 
Papacy. Their reHgious doctrine appeared ques- 
tionable to the Dominicans of the Spanish Inquisi- 
tion. Their polemic against the Calvinists, their 
desire to make things easy, so to speak, to put things 
in a way acceptable to the common sense of the 
average man, led them to express views not to be 
reconciled with the theology of Aquinas, the canon 
of Dominican orthodoxy. 

The Jesuits, on the other hand, were too clear- 
sighted not to see the growing impotence of Spain. 
To make France subservient to their policy would 
be a triumph not perhaps unattainable by patient 
perseverance. 

The adroit Du Perron, who had played a con- 
spicuous part in his master's conversion, arrived at 
Rome (July, 1595) to assist Cardinal d'Ossat in set- 
tling with the Curia the method and conditions of 
the King's absolution. Du Perron has been accused 
of sacrificing his master's interests to the hope of a 
Cardinal's hat ; a charge rendered credible by the 
contemptible character of the time-server against 
whom it was brought. Yet he supported D'Ossat 
in stoutly contesting every point, and those on which 
they gave way were for the most part matters of 
form and ceremonial ; such as the blows which the 
representatives of Henry knelt to receive, while they 
kissed the Pope's foot, before he pronounced the 
formula of absolution,— concessions which may be 
justified as the price paid to the Holy See for the 
surrender by it of the two most vital points at issue. 



1598] Open War with Spain. ' 307 

I. The French refused to admit that the heresy 
or excommunication of their King could affect his 
right to the throne or his claim to the allegiance of 
his subjects : and by allowing that he did not require 
'' temporal rehabilitation " the Pope gave up that 
dogma of the supremacy of the spiritual over the 
temporal power, which, since the days of Hilde- 
brand, it had been the aim of his predecessors to 
establish. 

II. Clement VIII. had declared it to be impossible 
that he should absolve Henry of Bourbon, unless 
he would prove the sincerity of his orthodoxy by 
causing the decrees of the Council of Trent to be 
observed in his dominions. But by admitting a 
written stipulation that this should only be done so 
far as was consistent with public tranquillity, he 
gave back with the left hand what he took with the 
right, and sanctioned that toleration of heresy, 
which he pronounced to be inadmissible. 

The final submission of Mayenne (January, 1596) 
was the outward and visible sign of the dissolution 
of the League. Yet the discredit of the Duke was 
so great, and his power had been brought so low, 
that the terms which he obtained might well appear 
extravagantly favourable. He received the govern- 
ment of the Isle of France, three fortresses as places 
of surety, Chalon-sur-Saone, Seurre and Soissons, 
together with the payment of all his debts. The 
Parhament remonstrated against such lenity ; but 
Mayenne had secured the intercession of Gabrielle 
d'Estrees, by promising, in the event of the King's 
death, to support the claim of her son, the infant 



3o8 Henry of Navarre. [1595- 

Duke of Vendome, to the Crown. The debts of 
the Duke grew Hke the hydra's heads. Directly- 
one was paid two more sprang up in its place, to 
the profit of the debtor, if, as was suspected, this 
was the source of his subsequent wealth. Yet it 
must be allowed that Mayenne acted the part of a 
defeated and pardoned rebel with some dignity and 
honour. Unprincipled, and unscrupulous in his 
ambition, and without those brilliant qualities which 
dazzled the mob in his brother Guise, he was, 
nevertheless, a man of considerable, though some- 
what inarticulate ability. He had played the game 
of conspiracy and treason and had lost, and was too 
wise to return to it, when the chances of success were 
infinitely less favourable. Henceforth, therefore, he 
proved a loyal and useful subject. 

His first interview with the King took place at 
the country house of the royal mistress. Taking 
him by the arm, Henry walked the Duke rapidly up 
and down in the garden, till Mayenne, crippled with 
the gout and of unwieldy bulk, was almost at his 
last gasp. '' One more turn," the King said in an 
aside to Rosny, " and I shall have punished this fat 
fellow for all the trouble he has given us," — and 
then aloud : " Confess, cousin, that I am going a 
little too fast for you." — '' Faith, Sire, it is true ; if 
your Majesty had gone on, I think you would have 
killed me." — '' Shake hands, cousin," laughed the 
King, " for, God's truth, this is all the ill you need 
ever fear from me," and he sent him back to the 
house to drink a couple of bottles of a favourite 
vintage. 



1598] Open War with Spain. 309 

Not long after, Epernon, who had not pubhshed 
his treaty with PhiHp II., and who found the inhab- 
itants of the towns and districts he held everywhere 
turning against him, thought good to make his peace 
on terms not less favourable than the other rebels. 
Henry's one aim was to concihate his domestic 
enemies in order that he might direct the united 
strength of the country against Spain. He was so 
far successful that in the next year we find May- 
enne, Epernon and Montmorency, representing the 
parties of the League, of the Royalists of the time 
of Henry HI., and of the Politicians fighting to- 
gether in the royal army under the walls of Amiens. 
Yet it was difficult for his faithful servants, many of 
whom could not obtain payment of the sums they 
had spent in his service, to see the traitors who had 
fought against him lavishly rewarded and caressed, 
without some feeHng of discontent. These new 
courtiers had not been standing idly waiting to be 
hired in the market-place, but busily employed sow- 
ing tares, and trampling under foot the master's 
fields. And now, were they to receive a day's fair 
wage many times over, while the honest labourers 
who had borne the toil and heat of the day were 
sent empty away ? 

Although it was with the utmost difficulty that 
the King found the money to keep his troops to- 
gether, the siege of La Fere continued. After the 
death of Francis D'O, he had placed his finances 
under the management of a board. Some of the 
members proved to be wanting in experience and 
vigour, others in honesty ; even Rosny, who was 



3IO Henry of Navarre, [1595- 

among them, could effect nothing in the face of the 
lethargy and ill-will of his colleagues. In the middle 
of April (1596) the King wrote that it went to his 
heart to see his people so ground down. That his 
one wish was to relieve them from so many subsidies, 
tallages and oppressions. But before anything could 
be done, the Spaniards must be driven out of the 
country. The 1,500,000 crowns of which his treasury 
board had cheated him during the year, would have 
sufficed for this. But, as it was, he was close to the 
enemy without a horse that could carry him, with- 
out a whole suit of armour: his .shirts torn, his 
doublet out at elbow, his larder empty. For two 
days he had been taking pot-luck here and there. It 
is indeed probable, that but for a most timely loan 
from the Grand Duke of Tuscany he would have 
been compelled to raise the siege. 

The master of the Indies, the ruler of Mexico and 
Peru, was not less poverty-stricken than his antago- 
nist ; yet, early in 1596, he had been able by the most 
desperate expedients to collect a considerable treas- 
ure. Part of this was devoted to preparing a great 
armament for the invasion of England ; but part 
also was employed in supplying with a formidable 
army, the new ruler of the Netherlands, the Cardinal- 
Archduke Albert, who was about to exchange his 
red hat for the hand of his cousin, the Infanta 
Isabella. Twenty thousand men were collected at 
Valenciennes, and it was generally thought that an 
attempt would be made to relieve La Fere. Henry 
hoped that the Archduke would fight a pitched 
battle. But the movements of the Spaniards were 



1598] Open War with Spain. 3 1 1 

directed by a French renegade, De Rosne, a Marshal 
of Mayenne's fashion, and a man of remarkable skill 
and daring, to whom Fuentes had owed the successes 
of the previous year. Acting by this man's advice, 
the Cardinal-Archduke sent detachments to make a 
feint in the direction of La Fere, and marched the 
bulk of his forces rapidly on Calais. 

On April 14th the King was startled to hear that 
the enemy had stormed the outworks of that town. 
Within twenty-four hours he was on the march with 
his cavalry and some light infantry. Bad news met 
him on the way. The Governor of Picardy, the 
Count of St. Pol, had been driven back by a furious 
storm when near the mouth of the harbour with re- 
inforcements. No sooner were the walls of the town 
breached, than the inhabitants, fearing the fate of 
DouUens, compelled the Governor and garrison to 
retire into the citadel. But that also was defended 
with little perseverance or courage. The victors 
acquired a vast booty, in addition to the possession 
of a stronghold not less useful for their designs 
against England than as a basis of operations in 
Picardy. 

Queen Elizabeth had once more overreached her- 
self by trying to take advantage of her neighbours' 
necessities. The Spaniards had captured the port 
which commanded the narrow seas almost in sight 
of a powerful armament collected at Dover under 
the command of Essex. In a few hours 16,000 
English might have been landed on the French 
coast, a force sufficient to have compelled the hasty 
retreat, or to have secured the defeat, of the Arch- 



312 Henry of Navarre, [1595- 

duke. But the Queen asked for Calais as the price 
of her help. Henry IV. replied that he would 
sooner see it in the hands of the Spaniards, from 
whom he trusted shortly to recover it, than of the 
English, v/ho had so stubbornly held it for genera- 
tions. When EHzabeth relented, and the eagerly 
expected permission to sail reached Essex, it was 
too late, the Spanish flag already floated over the 
citadel. 

Since he could not save Calais, the King strength- 
ened the garrisons of the neighbouring towns and 
hastened back to La Fere, which surrendered on 
May 22d. The Spaniards, meantime, had taken 
Ham, Guines and Ardres. The gentry in the King's 
service hurried home, according to their custom, as 
soon as the siege was concluded, and the emptiness 
of the treasury made it difficult to keep even the 
mercenaries together ; yet Henry contrived to march 
towards the Archduke at the head of an army more 
formidable than the Austrian cared to meet. The 
Spaniards recrossed the frontier and sat down be- 
fore Hulst, which they took from the Dutch, at the 
cost of many men, much money and a loss far more 
irreparable, the life of Marshal de Rosne. 

The recent successes of the Spaniards raised the 
hopes of those nobles who saw in the weakness of 
the monarchy a chance of enlarging their own privi- 
leges. The Duke of Montpensier, a personage less 
ill-meaning than foolish, was put forward to suggest 
as an excellent plan for keeping an army on foot, 
that the King should grant the hereditary possession 
of their offices to all governors, whether of provinces 



1598] Open War with Spain. 313 

or towns, on condition that they should constantly 
keep a certain number of men under arms for his 
service. Henry asked his cousin, whether he had 
taken leave of his senses, but this brilliant suggestion 
was a straw which showed clearly enough from what 
quarter the wind was blowing. 

On the other hand, Henry IV. probably owed to 
the unfavourable aspect of his affairs, the signature 
by the Queen of England and her clients, the 
United Provinces, of an offensive and defensive 
alliance with France against Spain (May 24th). 
Elizabeth's friendship was ever warmest in his ad- 
versity. Although the assistance promised by the 
allies for the war in France was meagre, the moral 
effect of the treaty was great. It committed the 
Queen to open war against Philip II. She could 
not, after so public an engagement, conclude without 
indelible infamy a separate peace at the expense of 
her allies, and exchange, as she had thought of do- 
ing, Flushing and Brill for Calais. 

It was something to have secured the open alli- 
ance of England and of the United Provinces. But 
if the struggle was to be carried to a speedy and 
successful issue, it was not only necessary for Henry 
IV. to obtain further resources, but also to prove to 
his enemies at home and abroad that he commanded 
the support of a vast majority of the nation. 

There were some who advised the King to con- 
vene the Estates and thus to show that he possessed 
the confidence of his people. But the greater num- 
ber of his councillors pointed out the opportunity 
that would thus be given to intrigue and faction ; 



314 Henry of Navarre. [1595- 

the little good effected by recent meetings of the 
States-General ; the weary debates that would ensue 
accompanied by unprofitable complaints of evils, 
which all must see and deplore, but which could 
hardly be remedied while a hostile army was in the 
land ; the certainty that the necessary supplies 
would only be voted after long and perhaps ruinous 
delay. Henry, not more disposed to share his au- 
thority than other born rulers of men, listened read- 
ily to advice which fell in with his humour. Nor 
can it be denied that there was no general wish in 
France that the Estates should meet. The country 
was inclined to acquiesce in personal government by 
the same weariness of political strife, the same ma- 
terial exhaustion, the same desire of repose, the 
same tendency to await reforms from above, which 
led the national representatives, at the conclusion 
of the hundred years' war, to surrender the power of 
the purse by voting a permanent tallage, and which 
at other periods have led the French to submit to 
the usurpations of some " Saviour of society," a 
Richelieu or a Napoleon. 

The last meetings of the States-General had 
merely been the preludes to civil war. The tradi- 
tions of constitutional government had been dis- 
credited by being used as the instruments of faction. 
The reforming, the constitutional and progressive 
party, so influential a generation earlier at the 
States-General of Orleans and Pontoise, had been 
composed of two kinds of men, the Huguenots 
and the Moderates or Politicians. The Huguenots 
when the hope of seeing their creed adopted as the 



1598] Open War with Spain. 315 

national faith faded away, appear to have laid aside 
all wish to introduce constitutional reforms ; the 
Politicians, weary of anarchy and of the insolence 
of Spain, were willing to support any government, 
strong enough to establish order at home and to 
make France respected abroad. The King, there- 
fore, met with general approval when he had re- 
course to a half measure, for which precedents were 
not wanting, and summoned a meeting of Notables 
for the Autumn (1596). 

The Notables met at Rouen (Nov. 4, 1596), for an 
epidemic was raging in Paris. One hundred and 
fifty nobles, prelates and magistrates had been sum- 
moned, but on the first day only eighty were present 
and these for the most part lawyers and officials. 
The King welcomed them in a characteristic har- 
angue : '' If I wished to gain the name of orator, I 
should have learnt some long and eloquent speech 
and have spoken it before you with suitable dignity ; 
but, gentlemen, my wishes aspire to two more glori- 
ous titles, to be hailed the Saviour and Restorer of 
this State. You know, to your cost, as I to mine, 
that when God called me to this Crown, I found 
France not 'only ruined but almost lost to the French. 
By the divine favour ; by the prayers and good 
counsels of my servants who do not follow the pro- 
fession of arms ; by the sword of my brave and gen- 
erous nobles — among whom I reckon the Princes, 
for the honour of a gentleman is our best possession ; 
by my own toils and exertions, I have saved our 
country from annihilation. Let me now save it from 
ruin. Share this second glory with me, my dear 



3 1 6 Henry of Navarre. [1595- 

subjects, as you shared in the former. I have not, 
Hke my predecessors, called you together merely to 
approve what I have determined. I have summoned 
you to take your advice, to believe and to follow it. 
In short because I desire to place myself under your 
guardianship, a desire seldom felt by a King, a grey 
beard and a conqueror." 

The King's answer to some expression of surprise 
from his mistress that he should have spoken of 
putting himself under the tutelage of the Notables, 
has often been repeated, '' Ventre St. Gris, so I 
said, but I meant with my sword by my side." 
It is not so well known that the draft of his frank 
and artless speech, written and elaborately corrected 
in his own hand, still exists in the French National 
library. Had they known that it was an after 
thought which made them " Gentlemen " and " his 
dear subjects," and that his love for his people was 
not at first extreme, the Notables might have dis- 
trusted their Prince's flattery. The King's impul- 
sive frankness was indeed not wholly false : he often 
said what he really meant and said it simply, but 
this simplicity was the perfection of art. He boasts 
of everything, and even his frankness is the subject 
of his self-commendation. *' I am grey without, 
golden within." " What is on my lips is in my 
heart . . . my words are not of two colours." 
If we examine his speeches we find in them little ar- 
gument, but skilful flattery and sometimes scathing 
denunciation ; vague and often repeated promises 
of future benefits ; much praise of himself and ener- 
getic exhortation to others to go and do likewise. 



1598] Open War with Spain. 317 

The Notables protested their devotion ; suggested 
some reforms ; and, quite unconstitutionally, voted 
a duty of five per cent, ad valorem on all goods 
brought for sale into towns, villages and markets. 
This tax, called the Pancarte, proved eminently un- 
popular, and was withdrawn after no long time. 
The assembly was dismissed and the King returned 
to' Paris, where, for the first time since his accession, 
he lived for a while the life of a pleasure-loving 
Prince, enjoying ballets and masques, hunting parties 
and sumptuous feasts. It was noted as a mark of 
sinful extravagance, likely in a time of general want 
and pubHc poverty to provoke the wrath of Heaven, 
that Bon Chretien pears at a crown a piece, and 
sturgeons which cost one hundred crowns, were 
served at the christening feast of the son of the 
Constable Montmorency. 

Yet more serious matters were not neglected. 
Preparations were made to open the campaign of 
the next year by the siege of Arras, and stores and 
ammunition were collected at Amiens. As the 
citizens insisted that their privilege not to receive a 
garrison should be respected, they could guard their 
own walls with 10,000 armed men, the King ordered 
the Count of St. Pol, the Governor of Picardy, to 
take up his abode in the town and to watch over its 
safety. 

But Hernantello de Portocarrero, the Governor of 
DouUens, an officer as fertile of resource as he was 
prompt and bold in action, heard that the train- 
bands of Amiens were not over-exact in performing 
their military duties. Accordingly a party of his 



3i8 Henry of Navarre, [1595- 

men disguised as peasants on their way to market 
and driving a big waggon, appeared early one morn- 
ing at the gates. As they passed under the arch of 
the portal the neck of a sack filled with nuts came 
undone, and while the guards were scrambling for 
the scattered contents, some of the pretended 
countrymen blew out their brains, or stabbed them 
with their concealed weapons, while others cut the 
traces of the cart horses, so that the waggon was left 
standing in the way and it was impossible either to 
close the gates or to drop the portcullis. Porto- 
carrero and his men lurking in ambush hard by 
rushed up at the sound of the scuffle and were in 
possession of the town before the terrified citizens 
could collect or offer any effective resistance. 

'' On Wednesday, the I2th of this month " (March, 
1597), writes the diarist L'Estoile, '' in the midst of 
feasts and dances came the news of the surprise of 
Amiens, to the dismay of the revellers and of Paris. 
Even the King, whose constancy and magnanimity 
are not easily shaken, seemed stunned by the blow. 
Yet looking to God, as is his wont in adversity, 
rather than in prosperity, he said aloud : ' This blow 
is from Heaven. These poor people have lost them- 
selves by refusing the small garrison I wished to 
give them.' Then, after a moment's thought, 
* Enough of playing the King of France ; it is time 
to be again the King of Navarre.' " 

That same day, Henry determined on the measures 
to be taken for the recovery of the lost town, and 
suggested or approved of expedients for raising the 
money required for a long and difficult siege. Before 



T598] Open War with Spain. 319 

nightfall he was on horseback, and on his way to the 
frontier. He sent Marshal Biron to invest Amiens 
on the north, to cut off the communications of Por- 
tocarrero with Doullens and to prevent reinforce- 
ments or supplies reaching Amiens from the Low 
Countries. He himself visited the towns on the 
Somme, reassured the panic-stricken inhabitants and 
strengthened their garrisons. Then he hurried back 
to Paris to obtain the necessary means for paying 
and supporting his army. The Parliament had re- 
fused to register the financial edicts. The creation 
of new judicial offices for the purpose of raising 
money by their sale, diminished both their emolu- 
ments and their dignity. Among other grounds for 
their opposition, they alleged that the King wasted 
money on his buildings. This Henry took much 
amiss; he ought not, he complained, to be grudged 
the little he spent in this way. Building was his 
only consolation and pleasure in the midst of his 
toils ; hunting, gambling and women were appar- 
ently not worth mention. Yet in addressing the 
Parliament he restrained his anger and almost 
assumed the tone and attitude of a suppliant. He 
had come to beg alms from them on behalf of those 
who were spending their lives and toiling day and 
night to secure the tranquillity of their countrymen. 
"I have been," he continued, "on the frontier. I 
have done what I could to keep the people in good 
heart. I have encouraged the country folk. I have 
fortified their church towers. But I must tell you, 
gentlemen, that I felt their cries of ' Vive le Roi ' 
like so many stabs in my heart, knowing that I 



320 Henry of Navarre. [1595- 

shall be compelled to abandon them on the first 
day " (of the enemy's invasion). The lawyers were 
obdurate until the King held a '' Bed of Justice " 
and commanded instant registration. By this means 
and by the zeal of Rosny, into whose hands the 
control of the finances was gradually passing, some 
2,700,000 crowns were raised and it became possible 
to press the siege of Amiens with vigour and at the 
same time to check the renewed aggressions of 
Mercoeur in Brittany, and of the Duke of Savoy on 
the Eastern frontier, as well as to guard against the 
intrigues and plots reported from various quarters, 
last writhings of the scotched snake of the League. 

During April and May the energy and care of 
Biron prevented the Spaniards from throwing more 
than one reinforcement of 600 men into Amiens and 
drew a double line of entrenchments round the town 
to the north of the Somme. Henry reached the 
leaguer on June 7th and completed the investment 
by extending his posts south of the river, but with- 
out protecting them by defensive works. 

The King found an army of barely 15,000 men, 
which after his arrival quickly grew to 25,000, the 
gentry showing their usual zeal when there was an 
opportunity of fighting under the immediate com- 
mand of the King. Queen Elizabeth was with diffi- 
culty induced to fulfil her obligations under the 
recent treaty and to send 2,000 men. The rebelHon 
in Ireland, the armament which, notwithstanding 
the capture of Cadiz and of his fleet in the previous 
year, Philip II. had again equipped for the invasion 
of England, were more than mere pretexts. But in 



1598] Open War zvith Spam. 2)'^i 

addition to the Queen's contingent, English volun- 
teers crossed the Channel, or came from Flanders to 
fight under so popular a Prince against the common 
enemy. Six thousand English and Dutch soldiers 
made up for the absence of the majority of the 
French Protestants, who, indignant that so little 
attention was paid to their complaints, and alarmed 
by the King's reconciliation with the Pope and by 
the concessions made to his opponents at their 
expense, listened to wild talk of rising in arms, 
seizing Tours and taking advantage of the King's 
difficulties to compel attention to their wrongs. 

Although more than once Henry's resources were 
nearly exhausted, the care of Rosny never allowed 
the military chest to become quite empty ; and since 
the soldiers were paid, they could be kept under 
good discipline. The peasantry of the neighbour- 
hood instead of being plundered and tortured were 
able to cultivate their fields and reap their harvest 
in safety, whilst they found in the royal camp a 
profitable market for their produce. It was perhaps 
the first time during these wars that the proximity 
of a large army was felt to be a blessing rather than 
a curse. 

Sufficient accommodation, a well-supplied com- 
missariat, excellent sanitary arrangements, good 
quarters and attendance for the sick and wounded 
bore witness to the King's humane and intelHgent 
care for his men. It was usual in the sieges of this 
period for a quarter or even half of the assailants to 
perish from disease, privations and neglect, but 
before Amiens, notwithstanding much hard fighting, 



32 2 Henry of Navarre, iisdS- 

the French lost barely 600 men in four months. The 
Archduke Albert, though fully alive to the import- 
ance of holding Amiens — he would sooner, he said, 
see the enemy in possession of Ghent or Antwerp^ 
could attempt nothing to raise the siege till he had 
money. But as the Spanish Government was en- 
tirely without credit, money was not procurable till 
the taxes were collected and the galleons had 
arrived from the Indies. Portocarrero, though 
unaided, showed the same enterprise and resource 
in defending as in taking Amiens, and his death on 
September 3d was an irreparable loss to the 
besieged. 

It was not till the 12th of the same month, that 
the Cardinal Archduke succeeded in assembling his 
army, 18,000 foot and 3,000 horse at Douai ; on the 
14th the sound of the guns he fired to announce his 
approach, was heard by the besieged. On the north 
of the Somme, the French lines were too strong to 
be attacked, but if the Spaniards could cross the 
river and approach the town from the south, they 
would either oblige the King to fight a pitched 
battle with only a part of his army, or to raise the 
siege. 

On the 15th the Archduke attacked the village of 
Longpre, which lay outside the French lines and 
commanded the nearest bridge over the Somme. 
Marshal Biron, suspected of wishing, like his father, 
to protract the war, was accused of having left Long- 
pre purposely unfortified and of having informed 
the enemy that this was the vulnerable point of the 
French position, but as the King had personally 



1598] Open War with Spain. 323 

directed the siege for three months, he must share 
the blame of what was more probably a careless 
oversight. 

In the absence of the King, who was visiting his 
posts south of the river, the Duke of Mayenne took 
the command of the French, sent the Swiss and all 
the artillery he could collect to Longpre and began 
hastily to throw up entrenchments. If the Spaniards 
had pressed resolutely forward, Mayenne with his 
inferior forces would scarcely have been able to pre- 
vent them from occupying the village and crossing 
the bridge. But they halted at the first salvo of 
artillery, then fell back and gave the Duke time to 
strengthen his position and to bring up more men. 
By the time that Henry returned to his army, the 
Archduke had lost his opportunity, and began to 
retreat after a futile attempt to throw a division of 
picked men across the river. He came on, Henry 
wrote to Elizabeth, like a soldier, but fell back like 
a priest. The King would have pursued and 
attacked the retreating enemy, but was restrained 
by the caution or jealousy of his officers ; but the 
effect of a victory in the field could scarcely have 
been greater than that of the precipitate retreat of 
the relieving army and the consequent capitulation 
of Amiens (September 19th). 

The recovery of Amiens after the futile attempt 
of the Regent of the Netherlands to raise the siege, 
the good order and discipline of the French army, 
the unshaken loyalty of the majority of the former 
leaders of the League, the unexpected resources 
obtained by the ingenuity and energy of Rosny, did 



324 Henry of Navarre. [1595- 

more than any previous success to raise the reputa- 
tion of the King and the opinion of his power at 
home and abroad. He determined to make use of 
his superiority in arms and of the discouragement 
of his opponents to come to terms with his domes- 
tic and foreign enemies, and to satisfy, so far as was 
practicable, the demands of the Huguenots, before 
their despair or the ambition of some among their 
leaders led to new broils and complications. 

The life of Philip H. was drawing to a close in the 
midst of sufferings so awful that his enemies could 
not but recognise in them the divine chastisement 
of a tyrant and a persecutor. He had determined 
that the Netherlands should be the appanage of his 
daughter Isabella, and that she should rule there 
under the suzerainty of Spain, jointly 'with her 
cousin the Cardinal-Archduke Albert, whom she 
was to marry as soon as the Pope had released him 
from his priestly vows. But the position of the 
new Governors of the Netherlands would be pre- 
carious if exposed to the enmity of France as well as 
of England and of the United Provinces; nor did he 
wish to leave his young and incapable successor on 
the Spanish throne involved in the dangers of a great 
war. He therefore gladly availed himself of the 
mediation of the Pope to open negotiations with the 
man to whom he had so long denied any title but 
that of Prince of Beam. 

Clement VHI. had for some time been endeavour- 
ing to bring about an understanding between the 
two great Catholic powers and to unite them in an 
attack upon England, the stronghold of heresy. 



1598] Open War with Spain. 325 

Early in 1597 he assured Cardinal d'Ossat, the 
French ambassador, that his master was not bound 
to keep faith with heretics, nor indeed, as a sover- 
eign, to observe any engagements injurious to the 
interests of his country : '' Salus reipublicae summa 
lex." To these Machiavellian suggestions Henry 
IV. replied in a vein of impassioned honour : ^' I have 
pledged my faith to the Queen of England and the 
United Provinces to join my forces with theirs to 
resist the arms of the King of Spain. How could I 
then treat with him to their hurt, or even fail in a 
single one of those points I have promised to them, 
without betraying my duty, my honour and my own 
interests? No pretext, I fhink, could be sufficient 
to excuse such baseness and perfidy ; and if it could, 
sooner than avail myself of it I would lose my life. 
I have always found it better to trust in God than 
in the strength and works of men. Since His divine 
justice is infallible, I can never believe that He would 
favour an act of treachery so glaring as I should 
commit, if I were to desert my friends and allies for 
my own profit." Perhaps when the King sent this 
despatch, he protested over-much, perhaps he now 
areued, not without show of reason, that he had no 
intention of betraying his allies and turning his arms 
against them, and only contemplated opening ne- 
gotiations and concluding a peace in which they 
might, if they pleased, be included. 

No doubt he violated the express stipulations of 
the treaty concluded two years before, by which the 
contracting parties bound themselves to enter into 
no separate dealings or treaty with Spain, yet the 



326 Hejiry of Navarre, [1595- 

severity with which some even among French his- 
torians condemn Henry's conduct, appears excessive. 
When the French envoys signed the treaty with 
EHzabeth, they assured their master, "■ that no Prince 
can be bound by any treaty to do that which may 
endanger the safety of his people," and although he 
himself, as we have seen, appears to have repudiated 
this axiom of sixteenth-century statecraft, it was 
recognised by the English ministry when, after 
Henry's abjuration, they pointed out that the rela- 
tions between France and England must henceforth 
be determined by considerations of self-interest. 
Elizabeth herself certainly never acted, nor intended 
to act, on any other principle. Again and again she 
had been prepared to betray her allies and clients, 
the Dutch, if only Philip H. had made it worth her 
while. At that very moment, so his agents assured 
the French King, she was secretly negotiating with 
the Archduke Albert, and would have concluded 
peace on the basis of an exchange of Flushing and 
Brill for Calais and Ardres. Henry at any rate 
contemplated no such baseness as this. He gave 
his plenipotentiaries the most stringent directions to 
conclude no peace to which his alHes might not have 
the option of acceding. From the first he made no 
attempt to conceal his intentions from them. Soon 
after the recovery of Amiens he wrote to Elizabeth 
'* that he knew it to be more than ever necessary for 
their common safety, that they should in all things 
be close friends. He himself would never weary of 
fighting for a cause so just as theirs; born and 
reared as he had been in the midst of the toils and 



1598] Open War with Spain. 327 

dangers of war, where glory, the best food of every 
truly royal soul, is to be gathered like a rose amid 
thorns. But for all that, he might well be weary of 
the evils and miseries inflicted by war on his peo- 
ple ; since therefore the Spaniards were disposed to 
negotiate, he could not do otherwise than enter into 
treaty with them." 

The French and Spanish plenipotentiaries met at 
Vervins in February ; the peace was signed on 
May 2, 1598. 

The terms between the two contracting powers 
were settled without much difificulty. Retaining 
Cambray, the Spaniards evacuated Calais, the other 
Picard towns and the port of Blavet in Brittany. 
The French restored the county of Charolais. The 
negotiations were somewhat protracted by questions 
concerning the allies on both sides. The inclusion 
of Mercoeur in the treaty was absolutely refused by 
the French. On the other hand, Henry insisted that 
the option of acceding to the peace within six 
months should be offered to his confederates. 

The Dutch refused to accept a truce which the 
Spaniards were with difficulty persuaded to offer, 
and Henry IV. promised to continue to assist them 
indirectly by the most prompt repayment possible 
of the large sums for which he was their debtor. 

While his ministers began to negotiate the peace 
with Spain, Henry left Paris for the west to re- 
ceive the submission of Brittany. The departure 
of the English, recalled by their Queen on account 
of the threatened Spanish invasion, and of serious 
troubles in Ireland, together with the discontent of 



328 Henry of Navarre. [1595- 

the Huguenots, had given a respite to the Duke of 
Mercoeur. But the Bretons, however much attached 
to their provincial independence, felt no hereditary 
loyalty to a Lotharingian Prince, and were weary of 
the civil war and of the presence of the Spaniards. 
As soon as the King's approach was known, town 
after town threw open its gates. It seemed that 
Mercoeur must either submit himself a suppliant to 
the King's discretion, or seek a refuge among his 
Spanish allies at Blavet. A httle daughter of six 
years was the sole heiress of his vast riches and wide 
domains, and he offered her hand to the four-year- 
old Caesar of Vendome. After this he and his 
adherents were confirmed in all their possessions, 
offices and dignities, their zeal for the Catholic faith 
was commended in the pubHc treaty, and by secret 
articles they were promised additional gratuities and 
pensions. The King probably persuaded himself 
that whatever Mercoeur gained would be to the 
ultimate advantage of his son, and that the complete 
restoration of domestic peace could scarcely be 
bought at too high a price. 

In forming our estimate of Henry IV's treat- 
ment of the Huguenots, we have to consider two 
questions: First, did he unduly delay the satisfac- 
tion of their just claims? Secondly, was the final 
settlement fair and equitable ? 

When Henry IV. succeeded to the throne, the 
Catholics feared that, if immediately victorious, he 
would disregard his promise to respect and protect 
the Roman Church, as the established religion of 
the State. The Protestants, when he abjured their 



1598] The Edict of Nantes. 329 

creed, disbelieved his assurance that he would con- 
tinue their friend and that if they were attacked he 
was prepared to die in their defence. Du Plessis- 
Mornay, generally just to the honesty of his master's 
intentions, expressed this feeling openly in writing 
to him. His conversion, he maintained, must either 
be sincere, or yielded to compulsion. If sincere, 
what have the Reformed Churches to hope from his 
affection ? If compulsory, can he, who could not 
protect his own conscience, protect that of others? 
And if his conscience is enslaved, is his will likely 
to remain free ? It is a shorter step from one wrong to 
a greater than from right to wrong, from idolatry 
to persecution than from pure religion to idolatry. 

Both Romanists and Reformers were unjust to 
their King. He could not fail to see that while on 
the one hand the supremacy of Catholicism was too 
firmly established in France to be overthrown, on 
the other hand the disappointment and despair of 
the Protestant minority would be fatal to all possi- 
bility of a quiet reign. Had he felt no gratitude to 
the men *' who had guarded his cradle and borne 
him to power on their shoulders," there were two 
sufficient motives to determine him to make the 
condition of the Huguenots as tolerable as possible. 
One of these motives was the wish to convince the 
Protestant powers that he was no enemy to their 
religion, and that they might trust him as their 
leader in that renewed struggle with the Austro- 
Spanish house, to which he looked forward ; the 
other was the fear that the Huguenots might place 
themselves under the protection of England or of 



;^;^o Henry of Navan^e. [1595- 

the Elector Palatine and so once more expose 
France to the danger of foreign intervention. 

He who believed that no form of ecclesiastical 
polity was of divine institution, and who, while con- 
vinced that there was much error in the doctrine of 
Rome, suspected that his Calvinist friends had no 
monopoly of truth, was not likely to hold the balance 
unfairly, when the tranquillity of his kingdom and 
the success of his policy demanded that he should 
do equal justice to the jarring sects. 

Nor do the complaints appear just which were 
constantly made by the Protestant assemblies, re- 
peated by Aubigne and other Huguenot writers, 
and endorsed by their co-religionists down to the 
present time, that the King wilfully delayed the 
satisfaction of the demands of the Reformed 
Churches, that he granted their desire to all other 
factions and gorged his enemies with favours, be- 
fore he gave a thought to his most faithful friends. 
After he was firmly established on the throne, he 
required all the authority, all the resources he had 
painfully accumulated to impose the acceptance and 
the observation of the Edict of Nantes on the courts 
of law, the magistrates and officials. 

It was the constant and well-founded complaint 
of the Protestants that the moderate concessions 
made to them by the treaty of 1589 and by the 
edict of 1577, re-enacted in 1594, were rendered 
nugatory by the ill-will and disregard of the King's 
authority, shown by the Parliaments and by the 
Governors of towns and provinces. But if his 
authority was not sufficient to obtain for the Protes- 



1598] The Edict of Nantes. 331 

tants a moderate instalment of what they might 
justly claim, how would it have been possible for 
Henry to enforce the complete satisfaction of their 
demands? 

We may fairly ask those who accuse Henry IV. of 
neglecting the interests of the Protestants, to point 
out the time previous to 1598 when he could not 
only have promulgated an edict securing to them 
equal rights, toleration and liberty of worship, but 
also have enforced such a law. 

Clearly he could not have done so at his accession. 
At that anxious time the utmost Du Plessis-Mornay 
ventured to advise, was, that toleration should be 
granted to what might be named the '' so-called " Re- 
formed Church, under colour of the old edicts set 
aside, but not legally repealed, by the League ; while 
at the same time the Huguenots should be warned 
to behave with greater moderation. 

Nor in 1591, after the victory of Ivry, does the 
same " Pope of the Huguenots " ask for more than 
the re-enactment of the edict of 1577 '' under which, 
France had been prosperous, all the King's subjects 
satisfied, . . . the Catholic religion maintained 
in its dignity, the necessities of the Reformed re- 
ligion provided for ; by which in short it had seemed 
that the question had been so settled, that it ought 
not to have been re-opened." 

After his conversion and the recovery of Paris 
(1594), Henry accomplished the desire of Du Plessis- 
Mornay, by re-enacting the edict of 1577 together 
with the clauses added to it by the treaties of Nerac 
and Fleix. Nay, more, since the Reformed Churches 



332 Henry of Navarre. [1595- 

had lost their protector by his abjuration, and he 
neither would nor could allow a foreign prince or a 
powerful and ambitious noble to succeed him in that 
office, he not only permitted, but even suggested, 
that the Churches should organise themselves more 
efficiently for self-government and defence. The 
Huguenot community was divided into ten prov- 
inces, each province elected an assembly composed 
of an equal number of nobles, commoners and min- 
isters, and these provincial assemblies nominated a 
general council composed of ten members — four 
nobles, four burgesses and two ministers. The ec- 
clesiastical organisation, the consistories and synods, 
remained unaltered. 

If then the position of the Reformed Churches was 
still unsatisfactory and precarious, this was not so 
much owing to the neglect of the King, or to the 
absence of legal guarantees as to the persistence of 
their enemies and the weakness of the central Gov- 
ernment, which could not control the law-courts and 
officials, or punish the insubordination of the more 
powerful nobles. More ample concessions would 
have been valueless, since they would have remained 
a dead letter. 

The Huguenots not only complained that the 
turbulence of their enemies and the ill-will of the 
judges rendered the protection of the law futile, but 
also that each treaty the King concluded with his 
rebels contained clauses impairing their right to that 
protection. The Catholic nobles and princes were 
allowed to proscribe dissent within their domains, 
the towns stipulated that it should not be tolerated 



1598] The Edict of Nantes, 333 

within their walls. The sturdy importunity of the 
Protestant assemblies was not wholly displeasing to 
the King. He writes to a friend, that he wished 
that it might seem as if he granted whatever may be 
necessary for their welfare, rather because he cannot 
avoid doing so, than from his love towards them. 
Yet the Reformers not unreasonably suspected the 
sincerity of the royal intentions, when they saw the 
growing favour of their old enemies ; the presence of 
former Leaguers in the royal council ; the reconcilia- 
tion of the King and the Pope ; the heir to the 
throne, the young Prince of Conde, taken away from 
his Protestant teachers and educated as a Cathohc ; 
their own position becoming every day more pre- 
carious. Would Henry after he had come to terms 
with or subdued all his enemies, when his power 
was firmly established, care to provoke new discon- 
tent and to encounter fresh trouble in order that he 
might provide for their interests ? 

When Amiens was surprised the Protestant Parlia- 
ment was in session at Saumur, that strong fortress 
overhanging the Loire, which under the government 
of Mornay was in some sort the metropolis of the 
Huguenot Church. The King desired them to 
postpone their debates and to hasten to his assist- 
ance. Mornay urged them to obey the summons. 
Although a few young nobles joined the royal army, 
the majority held aloof. Yet the violent counsels of 
some rash and unpatriotic men were rejected by the 
influence of the wiser and better part — perhaps also 
frustrated by other means. Henry IV. afterwards 
complained that the malcontents had nearly ruined 



334 Henry of Navarre. [1595- 

everything by their perversity and had only been 
prevented doing so by the traitors among them who 
accepted his bribes or sought his favour. " How 
often," he concluded, '' when I saw you so opposed 
to my wishes, have I exclaimed to myself, O that 
my people would have hearkened unto me ! For if 
Israel had walked in my ways, I should soon have 
put down their enemies and turned my hand against 
their adversaries." 

To mitigate the impatience of the Protestants, 
commissioners were appointed to treat with them 
touching the satisfaction of their demands. These 
commissioners were men of known impartiality and 
moderation. The historian, De Thou, President of 
the Parliament of Paris, and Gaspard de Schomberg, 
Count of Nanteuil, a German by birth but no rela- 
tion of the Schomberg whose death at Ivry has been 
mentioned, or of that French marshal and English 
duke of the same name who fell leading his men 
to victory across the Boyne. 

In addition to the liberty of conscience and tolera- 
tion of their worship promised by previous edicts, 
the Protestants demanded : (i) that they should 
retain — at any rate for a considerable time — their 
places of surety ; (2) that no one should be in- 
capacitated by his religion for public office ; (3) that 
all cases in which Protestants were concerned should 
be tried by courts composed of judges of both 
creeds {CJiambres mi-parties). The negotiations 
continued during the siege of Amiens and to the end 
of the year (1597). 

The King did not grant the demands of the 



1598] The Edict of Nantes. 335 

Protestants till he had not only settled the terms of 
the peace with Spain and stamped out the last 
embers of the civil war, but had also disf)ersed the 
Protestant levies which Mornay and De Thou had 
vainly urged the Dukes of Bouillon and Thouars to 
lead to his assistance before Amiens ; until, in short, 
he was sufficiently powerful to settle the question 
on his own terms. That he was able to give the 
Huguenots so much, is the best proof that he might 
have compelled them to accept infinitely less. If 
then the terms of the Edict of Nantes were fair and 
equitable ; if in it the principle of religious tolera- 
tion was for the first time distinctly recognised and 
practically applied in the legislation of a, great coun- 
try, it is to Henry of Bourbon, that the credit is due. 
An American historian of the Huguenots, no lenient 
critic of Henry's policy and character, allows that he 
from the first contemplated some such settlement, 
and that no one probably was better pleased than 
he when that settlement could finally be accom- 
plished. We may then conclude that it was not the 
fault of the King, if the satisfaction of the claims of 
the Protestants was delayed ; neither can it reason- 
ably be denied, that that satisfaction when made 
was as ample and complete as the circumstances 
permitted. 

Henry IV., in the preamble to the Edict of Nantes 
(April 15, 1598), expresses his gratitude to God for 
having inspired him with courage and strength to 
struggle against the fearful disorders and troubles 
which he found at his accession. But . all things 
could not be done at once. Therefore he had 



^^6 Henry of Navarre. Li 595- 

chosen to remedy first those evils which could only 
be dealt with by force of arms ; postponing other 
reforms till these civil broils should be ended. For 
the fury of arms scarce allowed the establishment 
of laws. " But now that it has pleased God to 
grant us the enjoyment of some quiet, we think that 
we cannot better use this tranquillity, than by en- 
abling all our subjects to worship His Holy Name ; 
and, if it has not pleased him to permit, that this 
should as yet be done in one form of religion, by 
providing that it be at least done with one and the 
same intention, and with such order that there 
arise not hence any trouble or tumult." He has, 
therefore, determined to give to his subjects on this 
matter a general, clear, definite and absolute law in 
a perpetual and irrevocable edict, and he prays the 
Divine Mercy to convince them that the chief 
security for their union and peace, and for the re- 
establishment of the State in its former lustre de- 
pends on the faithful observance of this ordinance. 

It was no doubt with the intention of disarming 
opposition and allaying the alarm likely to be felt 
by the Catholics, that the first provision of the 
edict was in their favour. The King had already 
(December 6, 1597) engaged to leave the Protestants 
in possession of the towns they occupied for eight 
years and to pay their garrisons. The edict ensured 
to the Catholics the free celebration of their worship, 
and the undisturbed possession of their churches in 
these towns as well as in Beam and in the domains 
of the Huguenot nobles. 

The members of the so-called Reformed Church 



1598] The Edict of Nantes, 337 

were to have full licence to settle wherever they 
pleased in the kingdom, without being called upon 
to do anything against their conscience. Protestant 
worship was to be permitted in all towns where it 
had been allowed by the edict of 1577, or in which 
it had been held in 1596 and 1597, and also in one 
town in each bailiwick, or se'ne'chaussee, as well as in 
the fiefs of the nobles of the religion. 

The Protestants were to be freely received into, 
and to enjoy the benefits of, all colleges, schools 
and hospitals, to be allowed to found colleges and 
schools, and to print religious books in all towns 
where their public worship was sanctioned. They 
were to be capable of holding all offices in all 
places, notwithstanding any provisions to the con- 
trary in treaties made by the King with Catholic 
towns and princes. In all places, portions of the 
churchyards, or cemeteries of their own, should be 
assigned to them. No minors^ should on any pre- 
text of religion be removed from the guardianship 
of their parents, whose provisions by will for the 
religious instruction of their children must be re- 
spected and enforced by the courts. 

The ministers of the Protestant Church were to 
be exempted from all obligation to military and 
other service inconsistent with their sacred func- 
tions, and the King undertook to contribute an 
annual sum towards their support. On the other 
hand, the dissidents were to pay tithe and to respect 
the holidays of the Church and not to contract mar- 
riages within the prohibited degrees. 

A " Chamber of the Edict," consisting of magis- 



338 Henry of Navarre, [1595- 

trates of approved moderation, one at least of whom 
was a Protestant, was to be established in the Par- 
liament of Paris, and in those of Rouen and Rennes, 
to take cognisance of cases in which Protestants 
were concerned. Three courts, at Castres, Bordeaux 
and Gap, composed of an equal number of Roman- 
ist and Huguenot judges {Chanibres mi-parties), were 
to exercise a similar jurisdiction in southern France. 
The political provincial councils of the Huguenots 
were to be dissolved, and they were forbidden to 
raise any common funds, or to form any confedera- 
tion or league within or without the kingdom, unless 
permitted by the King. 

Such were the most important provisions of the 
Edict of Nantes, which, if it only secured toleration 
to the Calvinist Church, at least placed its members 
on a footing of complete civil equality with their 
orthodox countrymen. But what especially distin- 
guishes this from any previous edict favourable to 
the new religion, is that the King, who granted it, 
was determined that it should be no dead letter, but 
as strictly observed as any other fundamental law of 
the kingdom. 

The Huguenots were not entirely satisfied, al- 
though the wiser part agreed with Mornay that the 
King showed both wisdom and resolution and had 
secured terms for them as favourable as they could 
reasonably expect. The clergy and the lawyers vied 
in the loudness of their protests and in the virulence 
of their opposition. For nearly a year the Parlia- 
ment of Paris resisted the repeated commands of the 
King that they should register the edict. For many 



1598] The Edict of Nantes, 339 

reasons he was unwilling to compel them to do so 
by the public exercise of his sovereign authority, 
and instead of holding a " Bed of Justice," he sum- 
moned the members to attend him at the Louvre. 
They found him in his private apartments and were 
welcomed by a speech, in which an inflexible deter- 
mination to be obeyed was no way concealed by the 
tone of humour that tempered his reproofs. 

" Before speaking to you about that for which I 
summoned you, I will tell you a story of which I 
was just reminding the Marshal de la Chatre. Soon 
after the day of St. Bartholomew, four of us playing 
at dice, saw drops of blood appear on the table ; and 
as they reappeared a third time after being twice 
wiped away, I refused to continue the game, and 
said it was an evil sign to those who had been guilty 
of so great bloodshed. M. de Guise was of the 
party." Then after reminding his audience that 
blood called for blood, the King continued : " You 
see me in my cabinet, where I have come to speak 
to you, not in royal robes, nor with sword and man- 
tle like my predecessors, nor like a Prince giving 
audience to ambassadors, but in the guise of a father 
about to talk familiarly with his children ; what I 
want to say is this, that I pray you to verify the 
edict which I have granted to those of the Religion. 
What I have done is for the sake of peace. I have 
made peace abroad ; I wish to establish it within my 
kingdom. You should obey me, since I am your 
King, because of the obligations under which my 
subjects and especially you of my Parliament are to 
me. I restored some of you to your houses from 



340 Henry of Navarre. ti595- 

which you were exiles ; to others I restored the 
religion you had lost. ... I know well that 
there are intrigues among you ; that seditious 
preachers have been put forward. This was the way 
taken to the barricades and which led by degrees to 
the assassination of the late King. I shall be on my 
guard against all that. I shall cut off the roots of 
all faction and of all seditious preaching, by causing 
those to be cut short by the head who incite to 
them. I have overlept the walls of towns. I shall 
easily leap over a barricade. Do not make the Cath- 
olic rehgion your pretext. I love it more than you 
do. I am a better Catholic than you ; I am the 
eldest son of the Church, which none of you are or 
can be. You deceive yourselves if you think that 
you are the Pope's friends. I am more his friend 
than you. When I choose I will have you all de- 
clared heretics for not obeying me. . . . Do 
what you will I shall know what each of you says. 
I know everything that happens in your houses, 
all you do, all you say. I keep a little familiar who 
reveals these things to me. . . . Those who 
desire to obstruct my edict wish for war. Very well. 
I will declare it to-morrow against those of the Re- 
ligion, but I will not fight — no, you shall all go to 
the war in your robes and you will be like the pro- 
cessions of Friars with their muskets and frocks at 
the time of the League. I am now King and speak 
as your King. I will be obeyed. It is true that the 
Judges are my right arm, but if the right arm is 
gangrened and corrupt, the left must hew it off. . . 
The last word I shall say to you is just this : Follow 



1598] The Edict of Nantes, 341 

the example of M. de Mayenne. An attempt was 
made to induce him to join in some intrigue against 
me. He repHed that he, Hke my other subjects, had 
too much cause to be grateful to me ; and that he 
for one would always risk his life to do me a service, 
because, he added, I had saved France in spite of 
those who sought to trouble her, while he himself 
in the past had done what in him lay to ruin the 
Commonwealth. . . . This is what the Head of 
the League said. . . . Grant to my prayers what 
you might have refused to my threats. . . . Do 
quickly, I pray you, what I ask, and not for my sake 
only, but also for your own and for that of peace." 
The deputations sent by the Parliaments of Bor- 
deaux and Toulouse to protest against the too favour- 
able terms granted to the heretics, were given not 
less plainly to understand that the King meant to be 
obeyed. The magistrates of Toulouse had excelled 
in fanaticism and faction and in addressing them 
Henry assumed a tone of angry expostulation. " It 
was strange that they could not cast off their per- 
versity. It was plain the Spaniard still stuck in their 
belly. Who could believe that those who have 
risked life, goods, rank and position for the defence 
and preservation of the kingdom are to be held un- 
worthy of honour and public ofifice, are to be hunted 
and driven out of the country as traitors, while those 
who have striven with all their might and main to 
destroy this State are to be reputed good Frenchmen 
capable and worthy of office ? I am not blind, I can 
see clearly ; I choose that those of the Religion shall 
live in peace and be capable of holding office, not 



342 Henry of Navari^e. [1595- 

because they are of the Rehgion, but because they 
have served me and the Crown of France faithfully. 
I must insist upon being obeyed. It is time that we 
all, having had our fill of war, should learn wisdom 
by what we have suffered." 

Henry IV. proved his sincerity by continuing up 
to the end of his life to watch over the interests of 
his former co-religionists. 

Nothing had been more strenuously insisted upon 
by the Catholics or more carefully provided, not only 
by the terms of the treaty between the King and his 
Capital, but also by a provision in the edict itself, 
than that Protestant worship should not be publicly 
held in Paris or within a distance of five leagues 
from the walls. Yet in 1606 the King, moved by 
the hardships endured in winter by the Huguenots, 
and especially by the sickness and mortality which 
exposure, during a journey of thirty miles, caused 
among the children, authorised them to build a 
" temple " at Charenton, barely five miles from Paris. 
A vast building capable of holding 14,000 worship- 
pers soon arose, although the Catholics protested 
against the King's arbitrary violation of his own 
edicts and engagements. 

The rays of the royal favour fell perhaps most 
warmly on those who did not shame their master's 
compliance by constancy to their creed ; yet during 
the twelve years which separated the promulgation of 
the Edict of Nantes from the King's death, the Re- 
formers enjoyed greater peace and prosperity than 
at any other time before 1789. "Our churches," 
wrote Du Plessis-Mornay, " enjoy, by the grace of 



15981 The Edict of Nantes. 343 

God and under the blessing of the King's edicts, a 
condition they are not disposed to change. The 
Gospel is freely preached, and not without making 
some way. Justice is dispensed to us, we have 
towns in which we can take shelter from the storm. 
If any infraction of the law occurs, our complaints 
are listened to and reparation is usually made. We 
might wish that in many localities our places of wor- 
ship were nearer and more convenient, that we had 
a greater share in the distribution of honours and 
offices. . . . But these are things to be desired, 
not to be exacted." 

So long as Henry lived, the law was observed, and 
the Protestants had little reason for complaint ; nor 
is it easy to see how he could have secured them 
against the evils to which they were afterwards ex- 
posed. After the promulgation of his edict, the 
King wished the national synod, the supreme 
authority of the Calvinist Church in spiritual mat- 
ters, to elect the two deputies who were to attend 
the court as agents of the churches and defenders 
of their interests, but he eventually permitted the 
meeting for this and other purposes of the political 
assemblies, so that at his death both the ecclesiasti- 
cal and temporal organisation of the Huguenots 
remained unimpaired, and knitted them into a com- 
pact and formidable body. They held seventy-five 
fortresses, some, such as Saumur, St. Jean d'Angely, 
Embrun, La Rochelle, Nimes, Montauban, of great 
importance, and among these seventy-five were not 
reckoned the towns and castles belonging to the 
domains of the great Protestant nobles. 



344 Henry of Navarre, L1595- 

Yet the Huguenots were but a small minority of 
the nation. At the end of the sixteenth century 
there would seem to have been about 800 Protestant 
congregations ; these for the most part were confined 
to Languedoc, Poitou, Guienne, Provence and Dau- 
phine. In Normandy there were about sixty 
churches ; very few in the remaining provinces. 
The Protestants were at the very outside some 
1,250,000 souls — men, women and children, not 
more than a twelfth, and probably less than a 
fifteenth part of the population of France. It is 
indeed true that these were the very flower of the 
people ; the most intelligent and industrious artisans, 
the most enterprising as well as the most thrifty and 
diligent tradespeople, the most educated and public- 
spirited of the gentry and the most enlightened 
among the members of the learned profession. It is 
true also that the democratic organisation of their 
community, the temporal and spiritual affairs of 
which were administered by popular and represen- 
tative bodies, taught them those manly and self- 
reliant virtues which are believed to be the best 
fruits of popular institutions, and gave them inter- 
ests extending beyond the narrow sphere of private 
selfishness. 

On the other hand not only were they a minority, 
they were also an unpopular minority. The odium 
of the excesses committed by both sides during the 
civil wars fell upon them, just as the French people 
hated the English, after the Hundred Years' War, 
for all they had suffered at the hands of ruffians and 
brigands of every nationality. Even the purity of 



1598] The Edict of Nantes. 345 

their morals made them hateful at a time of gross 
and general licentiousness ; who were they that they 
should affect to be better than other people ? Their 
success in trade, due, like that of the Quakers, as 
much to the help, which members of their commu- 
nity were ready to give to each other, as to their 
industry and probity, excited the rancorous envy of 
their competitors among the Catholic middle classes. 
The lawyers disliked their independence. Even 
those magistrates who, in other matters, opposed the 
Jesuits and Rome, sought to prove their orthodoxy 
by denying justice whenever it was possible to the 
Huguenots. These dissenters with their privileges 
were an anomaly which marred the uniformity of the 
fair edifice of centralised government and law. The 
prejudices and fanaticism of the populace were artful- 
ly aggravated by the professed enemies of the Reform- 
ers, Jesuits and others. Hence riots, which were made 
a pretext for inveighing against those, who suffered 
by them, as a danger to the public peace. Their 
funerals were so constantly disturbed by the mob, 
that they were obliged to bury their dead by night. 
Therefore they were called Parpaillots, night moths, 
creatures who shunned the wholesome daylight. 

When, therefore, the loss of their King and pro- 
tector left the Protestants exposed on all sides to 
the attacks of their enemies, the necessity of self- 
preservation compelled them to draw even more 
closely together, to become to some extent what 
their enemies reproached them with being, imperium 
in imperio, a separate community in the State. If 
the Government was hostile to them, even if it was 



34^ Henry of Navai'i^e, [1598 

neutral, and did not protect them against their ad- 
versaries, then they must either make shift to protect 
themselves or seek protection elsewhere. If they 
attempted the first, they were accused of arming 
against their country, if the second, they incurred 
the charge of allowing themselves to be made the 
tools of the enemies of France. Yet during the 
troubled regency of Mary de' Medici, amid the con- 
flict of selfish factions and contemptible ambitions, 
although many Protestant nobles, Bouillons, Lesdi- 
guieres, and even Chatillons, were as false to their 
country as to their cause, the conduct of the Hugue- 
nots as a whole was marked by a loyalty, patriotism 
and forbearance, which, had they existed to the 
same extent among other classes, might have spared 
France long years of suffering and civil strife. 




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CHAPTER VIII. 



THE REORGANISATION OF THE MONARCHY. 



1598-1610. 




jFTER peace had been restored and the 
religious difficulty compromised, the 
most pressing need of the Govern- 
ment was to find some escape from 
the terrible financial embarrassment, 
due as much to extravagance, malad- 
ministration and dishonesty as to thirty-five years of 
civil and foreign war. Henry IV. was fortunate in 
having by his side the right man for the task, and 
he showed himself worthy of such good fortune 
by giving to that man full confidence and constant 
support. 

The merit of Rosny lay, not in the possession of 
creative genius, but in an exceptional talent for ad- 
ministration and organisation ; in an inborn hatred of 
extravagance and disorder. His reforms were in no 
sense revolutionary ; and consisted for the most part 
in introducing a careful and orderly collection of the 
revenue ; in abolishing abuses not a necessary part 
of the existing system ; in establishing, wherever he 

347 



34^ Henry of Navarre, [1598- 

was able, a rigid economy ; in restoring and fostering 
those sources of national wealth which had been 
choked or neglected during a generation of mis- 
government and anarchy. He was laborious, clear- 
headed, endowed with indomitable energy. When 
conscious of the King's approval and support, his 
unbounded self-esteem and self-confidence made him 
as careless of giving offence to the most powerful 
noble as to the humblest officer of the revenue. 
'' He treats all alike, worthy or unworthy, good and 
bad, deserving or undeserving, great and small ; re- 
ceives, or rather scorns, all with the same scowling 
face," wrote Casaubon to Scaliger. But this chur- 
lish and disobliging temper was of real service to the 
State, when it was necessary to disregard so many 
vested interests in fraud and robbery. 

Rosny was one of the committee of the council 
to whom the King entrusted the management of the 
finances, after the death of Francis D'O. His zeal, 
his determination to inquire into everything, above 
all his honesty, were insupportable to his colleagues. 
Finding himself thwarted at every turn by their 
ill-will, he withdrew from the board to be sent back 
with enlarged powers and promises of support. For 
the King was convinced of the dishonesty of his op- 
ponents and influenced in his favour by Gabrielle 
d'Estrees,' who had been courted by Rosny and who 
was eager to avenge on his rival Sancy the ridicule 
he had thrown on her ambitious hope of sharing her 
lover's throne. Rosny's energy supplied the money 
which made it possible to retake Amiens and re- 
lieved the King's most pressing needs, by compelling 
the farmers of the taxes and other harpies to dis- 



1610] Reorganisation of the Monarchy. 349 

gorge some part of their ill-gotten gains. His 
colleagues on the treasury board either yielded to his 
ascendancy or withdrew. 

Each year he received increased marks of royal 
confidence and favour. He was appointed Con- 
troller of the Canals and Rivers of France (1597), of 
the Highways and Ports — grand voyer, — and Grand 
Master of the Ordnance (1599), Superintendent of 
the King's Fortifications and Buildings (1602), Grand 
Master of the Ports and Harbours, Duke of Sully 
and Peer of France (1606). Although de facto 
Minister of Finance from 1597, he only received in 
1 60 1 the ofificial title and rank — Surintendant des 
Finances. He was also Governor of the Bastille, of 
Mantes, of Poitou. He managed his own exchequer 
not less skilfully than that of the State, and, al- 
though he kept the promise made to his master not 
to seek to enrich himself by underhand means, his 
income, 200,000 livres, equalled that of the 
wealthiest princes, and he had amassed valuables 
worth 2,000,000 livres. 

The state of the French exchequer, when it was 
taken in hand by Rosny, might well have daunted 
the most intrepid financier. The public liabilities 
amounted to some 350,000,000 livres, of which one 
third was floating debt.^ The causes of the financial 
confusion and distress were many and deep-seated. 
The right of levying some taxes had been assigned 
as security to the native and foreign creditors of the 
Crown. These taxes had generally been alienated 
at a valuation far below their real worth. The pro- 

* The intrinsic value of the " livre " was at this time about 2 fr. 50c., 
the relative value perhaps three or four times as great. 



350 Henry of Navarre. [1598- 

ceeds, for instance, of a tax which produced 150,000 
Hvres were assigned to the Duke of Montmorency 
as the equivalent of a pension of 27,000 hvres ; the 
difference represents the profit of the pubhcan who 
farmed the tax. 

As the creditors of the Government had often to 
wait long for their money, priority of payment de- 
pending on favour and bribery, those who had 
dealings with the State insured themselves by ex- 
orbitant charges against the risk of delay or 
default, and often sold their claims at a heavy dis- 
count to courtiers or placemen, who used their 
influence or official authority to obtain for themselves 
prompt and full payment. 

The pubhc accounts were so ill kept and carelessly 
audited that the Controller of the Exchequer could 
appropriate twenty per cent, of the sums which passed 
through his hands without fear of detection. At 
the time of the siege of Amiens, Rosny knew that 
of 500,000 crowns which he had paid into the treasury 
200,000 must be remaining, since he had kept a 
careful account of the expenditure to which the 
money had been appropriated and could produce 
the receipts given him for his payments. Ignorant 
of this the Controller boldly asserted that the 
balance in his hands only amounted to 90,000 
crowns. Rosny produced documentary proof that 
it must be 110,000 more. The Controller was com- 
pelled to disgorge, but neither punished nor even 
dismissed for his attempted fraud. 

The taxes were farmed, not to the highest bidder, 
but as a matter of favour; the members of the 



1610] Reorganisation of the Monarchy. 351 

council, the King's favourites, or even the Minister 
of Finance himself stipulating for a share in the 
profits of the publican or becoming his partner. 
The Surintendant D'O had a share in the farm of the 
salt tax. The Government paid exorbitantly for 
everything, not only because of the uncertainty of 
payment, but also owing to the dishonesty of its 
agents, who imitated the unjust steward in the para- 
ble, '' take thy pen and write so much more,'' but 
unlike him did not wait for a, consideration till dis- 
missed. Another evil was the inordinate number of 
officials of every kind. 

Nor among the causes of public distress must we 
forget the ruinous and oppressive nature of many of 
the taxes, which became the more economically dis- 
astrous as the capacity of the country to bear the 
load of taxation diminished. Commerce and manu- 
factures totally ceased in many districts. Not only 
were all ways of communication insecure, but the 
very roads themselves had ceased to exist. It was 
no uncommon thing for the inhabitants of a town 
to be suffering the extremity of famine, while a few 
leagues away the crops were rotting in the fields for 
want of a market. The population was decreasing; 
the land was going out of cultivation, partly owing 
to the devastation of the country and the destruc- 
tion of villages and towns by hostile armies, or by 
bands of brigands and of desperate peasants, who, 
robbed of all else, still found arms wherewith to rob 
their neighbours ; partly because of the excessive 
tallage, just as in Egypt, before the English occupa- 
tion, and in other Eastern countries, the peasantry 



352 Henry of Navarre, [1598- 

have not unfrequently abandoned their fields be- 
cause the land tax has not left them a share of the 
produce sufficient to support life. 

While taxation pressed more and more heavily on 
the poor, those who were best able to pay eluded 
their part of the public burdens. This they effected 
sometimes by claiming exemption, either as " noble " 
because they had borne arms in the King's service, 
or because they had acquired some small office, 
sometimes by bribery and corruption. The elus^ who 
determined the quota of tallage to be paid by each 
parish, were no longer elected as their name implied, 
but petty officials, for the most part venal like their 
betters. The asseurs or assessors, who fixed the 
share of each individual, were not more incorruptible. 

To reform, root and branch, the evils and abuses 
under which the country was perishing would have 
required a treatment perhaps more drastic than the 
condition of the commonwealth permitted, fevered 
and exhausted as it was by civil war and with 
wounds still too raw to be firmly handled. More- 
over, as we have said, the temperament and talents 
of Rosny were those rather of an administrator 
than of a reformer. The services which he ren- 
dered to his country were so opportune as to be of 
inestimable value, yet what he effected was very 
simple. He introduced an orderly and business-like 
method of keeping the public accounts ; prevented 
peculation ; and caused the taxes to be levied in a 
manner as economical to the Government, as little 
oppressive to the public, as was possible without a 
complete change in the existing system. At the 



1610] Reorganisation of the Monarchy. 353 

same time, supported, or rather urged on, by the 
King, he did much by the wise encouragement of 
productive enterprise to assist the wonderful recu- 
perative power which France has always shown dur- 
ing her short periods of respite from foreign war or 
domestic disorder. 

Rosny, grand voyer de France, was zealous in re- 
pairing and improving old means of communication 
and in creating new ones. The roads were soon in 
better condition than at any previous period since 
the time when they had echoed to the tramp of 
Roman legions. Long avenues of trees were 
planted to give shade and coolness to the wayfarers. 
The navigation of the rivers was improved. A com- 
prehensive plan for uniting the Seine, Loire, Saone 
and Meuse, by canals, so as to establish a waterway 
connecting the Mediterranean, the Bay of Biscay, 
the Channel and the North Sea, was approved by 
the King. A canal was begun in 1604 from the 
Loire to the Loing, a tributary of the Seine, as a 
first step towards the realisation of this scheme. 

Internal trade was restored by security and im- 
proved means of communication. The abolition of 
export duties on corn and wine threw foreign mar- 
kets open to the agriculturist. 

Sully well deserved the commendation of orthodox 
economists by his clear perception of the truth which 
is the foundation of the doctrine of free trade. ''As 
there are divers climates, regions and countries, so it 
has pleased God to make them suited to, and fertile 
in, divers products, materials, industries and arts 
which are not common to other places, or there at 



354 Henry of Navarre, [1598 

any rate not equally profitable. So that by traffic 
and commerce in those things in which some coun- 
tries abound, while others are wanting in them, in- 
tercourse to their mutual profit may be kept up 
between nations however distant." 

He saw that as both parties to an act of barter 
must obtain something more useful to them than 
that with which they part, so no trade can be carried 
on between two countries which is not more or less 
to the advantage of both. He believed that nature 
had meant France to be a pastoral and agricultural 
country ; that this was the most profitable employ- 
ment of her labour and capital ; and he objected to 
the attempt to foster arts and manufactures arti- 
ficially, both because it might divert the productive 
energies of the country to less profitable uses, and 
because he believed that the sedentary and indoors 
life of large classes would be physically injurious to 
the nation. 

Such considerations led Sully to regard with little 
favour his master's desire to encourage the introduc- 
tion of new manufactures and to naturalise the pro- 
duction of strange commodities. Henry, on the 
other hand, believed that the ever increasing number 
of the unemployed in the large towns was a constant 
danger to public peace. In one single quarter of Paris 
there were, in 1596, 7,769 paupers. He was con- 
vinced '' that the development of manufactures and 
industries offered the best security against civil broils 
and disorders." The protectionist may perhaps find 
some comfort in the success of that part of the King's 
commercial policy which offended the precocious 
economic orthodoxy of his minister. 



1610] Reorganisation of the Monarchy. 355 

Although the silkworm had been long introduced 
into France, by far the greater part of the silk stuffs, 
then so largely used, was imported from Italy. So 
also were the brocades and the cloth of gold and 
silver, to the purchase of which a considerable part 
of the revenue bf the upper classes was devoted at a 
time when a man of fashion often wore the value of 
his estate upon his back. No doubt it would have 
been better had the wealth thus wasted been used in 
improving the land of the gentry, and in the employ- 
ment of productive labourers ; thus increasing their 
wages and enabling them to create a new market for 
native produce, by the purchase of those necessaries 
which they were now unable to procure. And this 
Sully would have attempted to effect by sumptuary 
enactments. Indeed the insolent luxury and taste- 
less profusion of the pubhcans and usurers, parasites, 
who had taken advantage of the weakness of the 
body pohtic to settle upon it and to suck its blood, 
their tarts flavoured with ambergris, their hangings 
of cloth of gold and fountains of costly perfurnes, 
their studs and harems, might well seem to deserve 
the lash of the law. But sumptuary restrictions have 
rarely produced the intended result, and the protec- 
tive legislation by which Henry IV. fostered the 
growth of manufactures to satisfy the wants of 
luxury and ostentation was so far successful that, in 
foreign markets as well as at home, the silks of Lyons 
and Tours, the cloth of gold of Paris, the tapestry 
of Gobelins, soon successfully competed with the pro- 
duce of the towns of Italy and Flanders. Thus, not 
only was domestic luxury made the means of finding 
employment for the urban population, but France 



356 Henry of Navarre. L1598- 

obtained in exchange for the produce of labour, 
which would not otherwise have been employed, 
foreign commodities of more general utility. 

More useful manufactures were not neglected. 
Although fine cloth was still woven at Rouen, the 
supply of coarser stuffs was practically a monopoly 
in the hands of the English, who sold it on their own 
terms to the French consumers. 

Henry IV. encouraged the clothiers of Provins 
and Paris by advances of money, by concessions and 
privileges, to betake themselves again to their looms. 
Stringent regulations against fraud and careless 
workmanship protected the consumer and restored 
the reputation of native fabrics. 

Sully was not more anxious to encourage maritime 
than manufacturing enterprise. He even opposed a 
measure imposing on foreign vessels when they en- 
tered .French ports the same dues which were paid 
by French ships in the harbours of the country to 
which they belonged. He discouraged his master's 
desire to compete with Spain and England in the 
colonisation of the New World, — false, in this as in 
other things, to the tradition of his faith, — for, like 
the Puritans, the Huguenots had more than once in- 
stinctively turned to the great continent beyond the 
Western Ocean. Fortunately the King was in these 
matters both wiser than his minister and determined 
to have his own way. Commercial treaties which 
placed the countries on a footing of equality were 
concluded with Spain (1604) and with England 
(1606). 

The Spaniards were compelled to withdraw a 



1610] Reorganisation of the Monarchy. 357 

differential duty of 30 per cent, levied on all goods 
coming from France, which, by provoking a like 
taxation of Spanish imports into France, had caused 
all trade between the two countries to pass into the 
hands of foreigners. The good effects of the King's 
policy were soon felt. The export trade of raw 
produce — corn, cattle and wine — as well as of manu- 
factured goods vastly increased. Nowhere more so 
than in the Mediterranean. The traditional friend- 
ship between the Most Christian King and the 
Sublime Porte gave the French merchants great 
advantages in the Levant. 

The Venetian ambassador describes Marseilles as 
the emporium of Europe, and the successful rival of 
his own town. Three hundred ships of large ton- 
nage lay in her land-locked harbour. The annual 
profits of her merchants were believed to amount to 
a sum equivalent to over ;^7,ooo,ooo — no doubt a 
gross exaggeration. 

No sooner was Henry IV. in peaceable possession 
of the throne, than he sent a Breton gentleman as 
his Lieutenant-Governor to "■ New France," as all 
America between latitude 40° and 52° was then 
called. The Lieutenant-General and his intending 
colonists were wrecked, and it was not till 1604 that 
a serious and successful attempt to found a colony 
in the New World was made by a company of 
merchants and gentlemen, to whom the King granted 
a monopoly of the fur trade. De Monts, the chair- 
man of the company, Vice-Admiral and Lieutenant- 
General of the King, left Havre accompanied by 
Champlain, a gentleman of Saintonge, and in 1605 



358 Henry of Navarre, [1598- 

occupied the peninsula of Acadia. In 1608 Cham- 
plain sailed up the St. Lawrence. It was not till after 
the King's death that he discovered the vast inland 
seas, the sources of that mighty river which bears 
the largest ships to the foot of the precipitous rock 
on which, four hundred miles from the ocean, he 
founded Quebec, the future capital of Canada ; yet 
the credit of having initiated the most successful 
attempt hitherto made, to find a home for the 
French race beyond the limits of old Gaul, belongs 
to Henry IV. 

Sully and his master were heartily at one in pro- 
moting all plans for encouraging and improving 
agriculture. The King, says Scaliger, was capable 
of everything except keeping his gravity, or reading 
a book ; yet he at least turned over the leaves of 
the treatise on husbandry, written by Olivier de 
Serres, whom Arthur Young styles the Father of 
French Agriculture. Every day for the greater part 
of a year the book was brought to him after dinner, 
and he studied it for half an hour with apparent 
interest. Engineers were brought from the Low 
Countries to drain the marshes. The reckless de- 
struction and waste of the forests was checked and 
new timber planted. 

In 1598 Rosny travelled through the country, in- 
quiring into the condition of the people, their 
sufferings and most pressing wants. The result was 
that in 1600 an important ordinance was published. 
By this all arrears of tallage due for years prior to 
1597 Avere remitted, and the amount annually pay- 
able reduced by about 1,800,000 livres. Any fraud 



1610] Reorganisation of the Monarchy. 359 

or partiality in the assessment of the tallage was to 
be henceforth severely punished, and any taxpayer 
was enabled to bring corrupt or unfair assessors to 
justice by a summary and inexpensive procedure. 
An earlier edict had annulled all exemptions from 
taxation granted during the last twenty years. It 
was now enacted that the mere fact of serving in the 
King's army did not constitute a claim to exemp- 
tion ; that none not born of noble parents in legiti- 
mate wedlock should presume to style themselves 
esquire or noble. 

*~* The salt tax or gabelle was even more vexatious 
and oppressive than the tallage. It combined every 
one of those characteristics which, according to 
Adam Smith, are the mark of a bad tax. It was 
arbitrary, inconvenient, unequal, costly to levy and 
more profitable to those who farmed it than to the 
royal exchequer. 

Sully would have liked to make the sale of salt a 
Government monopoly throughout the kingdom — 
leaving every individual free to buy as much or as 
little as he chose. But this would have injured too 
many interests — and every '' interest " can bring 
pressure to bear on an administration except the 
general interest of the community. He was there- 
fore obliged to content himself with remedying the 
abuses of the existing system. Above all he warned 
the royal officers not to punish the poor too severely 
if they evaded taking their full quota, or even for 
having smuggled salt in their possession. To sell 
and to buy contraband goods were, he pointed out, 
offences of very different gravity. He reminded the 



360 Henry of Navarre, ri598- 

magistrates that in judging between the publicans, 
who farmed the revenue, and the taxpayers, they 
must not imagine that the interests of the former 
were the same as those of the State. They should 
recollect that it was the King whom they injured 
when they ruined his poor subjects by grievous fines 
and penalties. 

Much was gained by checking the extortions of 
the tax-gatherers and by compelling all who were 
liable to contribute their fair share of taxation, while 
a few years of peace, order and decent government 
so restored the vigour of the commonwealth that it 
could have borne with comparative ease a burden as 
heavy as that which before had crushed it to the 
ground. But thanks to the skilful management of 
Rosny the load to be endured was actually lighter. 

He began his reforms by introducing some order 
into the system of accounts. He assigned certain 
sources of revenue to defray the necessary expendi- 
ture, and devoted whatever remained over to meet 
the charges of the public debt. Undeterred by re- 
spect for persons he vigorously attacked the dishonest 
practices of the financiers, pubhcans and tax-gath- 
erers, who cheated the exchequer and oppressed the 
people. 

A '' Chambre Royale'' composed of magistrates of 
high position and character was appointed. Sully 
hoped that this court would punish these harpies 
and confiscate the ill-gotten wealth which enabled 
them to set the fashion and ruin the nobility who 
attempted to vie with them in ostentatious profusion. 
But, so the minister laments in his memoirs, the 



1610] Reorganisation of the Monarchy. 361 

bolder brigands escaped by bribery and intrigues, 
the lesser fry, " petty pickers and pilferers," paid for 
their own misdeeds and for those of the stouter 
thieves. The King himself was loath to deal hardly 
with men in whose houses he could throw aside 
restraint and ceremonial and find the most costly 
instruments of luxurious and too often vicious indul- 
gence eagerly offered by hosts who were proud to 
be the submissive ministers of his pleasures. 

Yet if the past could not be amended, the future 
might be improved. Henceforth the farm of the 
various taxes was put up to public auction and al- 
lotted to the highest bidder, instead of being sold as 
a matter of favour at a low price. In this way and 
by- redeeming those taxes which had been assigned 
as security for their interest to public creditors 
1,800,000 livres were annually saved. 

The abolition of numerous useless offices and 
sinecures, although a breach of public faith, since 
these had, for the most part, been bought with ready 
money, was a measure which both benefited the 
revenue and relieved the public from the vexatious 
interference of men who sought to obtain an equiva- 
lent for what they had paid by extortion, or by the 
pleasure of indulging in the insolence of office. 

The custom of entrusting important public func- 
tions to those who could pay for the privilege of 
exercising them had long prevailed in France. The 
sale of judicial offices had survived the protests of 
generations of reformers and the promises of succes- 
sive kings. The judges had acquired a prescriptive 
right to sell that which they had bought, and to re- 



362 Henry of Navarre, [1598- 

sign their office in favour of a son or other competent 
person, provided that they survived the transaction 
for forty days. If they died before this period 
elapsed or before resignation, the patronage lapsed 
to the Crown. 

Sully proposed that the hereditary tenure of their 
offices should be granted to all functionaries of the 
courts of law and exchequer, on condition of the 
annual payment of a sixtieth part of their estimated 
revenue. The treasury by this gained each year a 
large sum, and any system, even a bad one, was better 
than the previous confusion. The judges themselves 
were at first highly averse to an arrangement which 
touched their pockets and appeared to impair their 
dignity, for this yearly payment was likened to a 
tallage. 

The measure had wider consequences than were 
foreseen, either by those who promoted or opposed 
it. Not only were the magistrates relieved from the 
necessity of courting the favour of princes and no- 
bles, they were also made less dependent on the 
Crown itself. The dignified integrity and impar- 
tiality of the French judges during the following 
century contrasts very favourably with the servility 
of the English Bench to the Stuart kings. In theory 
nothing could be more difficult to justify than that 
functions which require high intellectual and moral 
qualifications should first be sold to the highest bid- 
der and then be transmitted by the accident of 
birth. But, as is often the case, what is indefensible 
in theory worked well enough in practice. There 
seems to exist in certain offices a traditional spirit 



1610] Reorganisation of the Monarchy. 363 

which shapes the character and conduct of those 
who hold them, and such an influence is naturally 
intensified if those offices are hereditary. The high- 
est places in the French magistracy were already to 
a great extent held by the members of a few fami- 
lies, closely connected by descent and marriage ; and 
these families were for the most part raised by re- 
finement of life and culture, by decency and gravity 
of manners above the roystering swashbucklers and 
frivolous nobles who affected to despise them. The 
keen sense of professional honour, the learning, the 
integrity which became hereditary in such families 
as those of De Thou and Arnauld, of Seguier and 
Harlay and Mole, not only supphed the Bench with 
independent and capable magistrates but gave to 
the noblesse de robe a consideration and an influence 
which made it an equipoise to the feudal nobility. 

It is impossible within the hmits of this book to 
attempt more than briefly to indicate some of the 
most salient points of Sully's administration. A few 
figures may best enable us to appreciate his success. 

In 1598 the public debt amounted to about 
348,500,000 livres— the revenue to about 30,000,000. 
Before 1609 he had liquidated over 100,000,000 
Hvres of debt ; reduced the yearly interest on what 
remained by some 5,000,000; redeemed no small 
part of the alienated royal domain; collected a treas- 
ure of 20,000,000 livres ; and raised the revenue to 
39,000,000, while reducing the tallage by about 
2,000,000. And he obtained this result while amply 
providing for the requirements of the public services 
and for the personal expenditure of the King. 



364 Henry of Navarre, [1598- 

Not only, as we have already seen, were roads and 
canals constructed, harbours and bridges restored, 
the navigation of rivers improved, marshes drained 
and all useful enterprises encouraged by subsidies 
and bounties, but the army also was reorganised, 
the arsenals filled with military supplies and with an 
artillery more powerful and better equipped than 
any which had as yet been seen. In the short war 
of 1600 against the Duke of Savoy, the army was 
accompanied by a field train of 40 guns, each requir- 
ing 47 horses : a battery which excited the marvel of 
contemporaries. 

The fortresses were put into thorough repair and 
strengthened under the direction of a Lotharingian 
engineer, Errard, as great a master in his art as the 
better known Vauban. He introduced the use of 
the glacis and perfected the system of angular forti- 
fications, with a double line of defence. First the 
ramparts with their cavaliers and bastions protected 
by a wide ditch, the soil excavated from which was 
used for the glacis, then an outer ring of redoubts, 
ravelins and trenches. 

The strength of the French armies had hitherto 
consisted in a numerous and valiant but ill-disci- 
plined cavalry, composed almost entirely of the 
feudal levies, whom it was not easy to collect, still 
more difficult to prevent from disbanding if the 
campaign was protracted or unsuccessful, and impos- 
sible to keep together after victory. The infantry 
consisted mainly of foreign mercenaries, well armed 
indeed and well drilled, but not over trustworthy, 
addicted to plunder, costly to maintain and muti- 



1610 J Reorganisation of the Monarchy. 365 

nous when their pay was in arrear. In short the 
French army was partly feudal, partly foreign, a 
grievous burden to the country, yet wanting the co- 
hesion and discipline necessary to make it an efficient 
instrument of scientific strategy. Men fought, it 
was said, in France, but war was only waged in the 
Low Countries. To lead his nobles in a dashing 
cavalry charge had been Henry's glory ; yet his first 
care was the reorganisation of the French infantry. 
By treating this as the most important part of his 
army, he changed the character of that army. It 
had been feudal and mercenary, it became popular 
and national. This policy accorded with the tradi- 
tions of the party he had once led. Cohgny and his 
brother Andelot, successively Colonels-General of 
the French foot, had attempted to improve the 
organisation and to raise the importance of that arm. 
Large sums were spent on buildings of public 
utility and on the improvement of the towns, espe- 
cially of Paris. Under the Valois, Paris appeared a 
mean and dirty town to travellers acquainted with 
the cheerful magnificence of Italian cities, although 
it contained some fine buildings, such as the reli- 
gious houses in their vast enclosures, and the 
" hotels " built in the style of the French Renais- 
sance, by great nobles or wealthy financiers. Four 
hundred thousand inhabitants lived in narrow, 
crooked and filthy lanes, ill paved, and of course un- 
drained. The stories of the lofty houses, built of 
lath and plaster, projected on each side till they 
almost met and excluded light and air from above, 
while booths and sheds encroached on the narrow 



366 Henry of Navarre. [1598- 

space below. In the summer, carpenters, cart- 
wrights, workers in brass, dealers in every kind of 
commodity plied their trades in the streets, while 
the wares of tanners, dyers and cleaners flapped in 
the fetid air, frightening the horses and threatening 
ruin to the finery of the courtier or country 
gentleman threading his way from his lodgings to 
attend the King's levee at the Louvre. As 
in the East, a crowd of half-starved dogs disputed 
the possession of the offal in the gutters with kites 
and crows. At night, bravos and cut-purses plied 
their trades, parties of young courtiers and nobles 
rose from a debauch to charge each other or the 
watch, to insult the women and beat the unoffending 
citizens. It was in vain that directly an alarm was 
raised all citizens were commanded to ring a bell and 
to rush out into the street lantern in hand to join in 
the hue and cry ; and that, to make the escape more 
difficult, houses were not allowed to have a back 
door. It was a rare exception for offenders against 
the public peace to be brought to justice. 

The bridges across the Seine were either of wood 
or encumbered by houses like old London Bridge or 
the Florentine Ponte Vecchio. The river was only 
partially confined by quays, which made it the more 
apt to overflow in other places, and frequent floods 
added to the squalid discomfort of the lower parts 
of the town. 

Had he lived longer Henry IV. would have created 
a new Paris ; as it was he did more than any previous 
king to improve and change the aspect of his Capital. 
The citizens were forbidden to encroach upon or 



1610] Reorganisation of the Monarchy. 367 

obstruct the streets, many of which were widened 
and made more regular. Henceforth no houses 
were to be built with overhanging stories. The 
pavement was improved, and although 'the habit of 
emptying noisome water from the windows of the 
upper stories into the streets continued till this cen- 
tury to expose those who passed by to the danger 
of a foul shower-bath, attempts were made to pre- 
vent accumulations of filth and refuse in streets and 
pubHc places. Numerous fountains supplied abun- 
dant and tolerably pure water. For the mis-called 
sanitary arrangements of modern times did not as 
yet pollute springs and river. 

Since the death of Henry H. the old Palace of 
the Tournelles surrounded by spacious gardensirati" 
been abandoned to decay. On this site Henry laid 
out the Place Royal surrounded by excellent stone 
houses, built partly by himself, partly by individuals 
to whom the land was sold at a nominal price on 
condition of their following the plans of the royal 
architects. His letters-patent declare that he in- 
tended the wide open space not only to be used for 
tournaments and other martial exercises but more 
especially to be a recreation ground for the inhabi- 
tants of the crowded suburb of St. Antoine. 

Quays were erected to raise the banks of the river 
and to prevent floods. The Pont Neuf was completed 
and connected the Place Dauphine, the centre of 
the trade of Paris, with the Rue Dauphine, which 
extended in a straight line, and with a breadth of 
thirty-six feet from the riverside to the Porte de 
Bussy. 



368 Henry of Navarre, 11598- 

Although Henry did all this and a great deal 
more for the benefit of the public, the greater part 
of 8,000,000 livres spent on building was devoted to 
increasing the magnificence and convenience of his 
own palaces. In the Capital he built the long 
gallery of the Louvre and began the other construc- 
tions which were intended to unite that palace to 
the Tuileries, and which were finally completed by 
Napoleon III. He doubled by his additions the 
size of the palace built by Francis 1. at Fontaine- 
bleau, his favourite residence owing to the good 
sport afforded by the neighbouring forest. 

At St. Germains a magnificent pile was erected on 
the site of the present terrace ; from the windows 
of which the King could look over terraced gardens 
sloping to the river, and ornamented in the Italian 
style with grottoes and statues, upon the fairest 
prospect in the valley of the Seine. 

Henry IV. was more successful in improving the 
material aspect of his Capital than in establishing an 
efficient police or in checking the general violence of 
manners. The diarist L'Estoile records that in one 
month of the year 1606 nineteen murders were com- 
mitted with perfect immunity in the streets of Paris. 
He and other contemporary writers frequently com- 
plain that life and property were safer in a forest 
glade than in the Capital. Thieves found their way 
into the houses of citizens, and, holding a dagger at 
their throats, compelled them to surrender their 
money and valuables. A President of the Parlia- 
ment, a steward of the Duke of Mayenne and other 
men of position were thus robbed. The vulgar bul- 



1610] Reorganisation of the Monarchy. 369 

lies who elbowed peaceable wayfarers into the kennel 
and broiled with each other at every corner, did but 
imitate the manners of their betters. 

The practice of duelling, so fashionable under the 
later Valois, became a deadly epidemic when the 
cessation of the war deprived the gentry of the 
opportunity of vying in valour and of indulging 
their taste for violence in legitimate warfare. In 
twenty years of Henry's reign (i 589-1609) over 
7,000 pardons were granted to gentlemen who had 
killed their adversaries in '' affairs of honour." In 
1602 a royal edict threatened all who sent or ac- 
cepted a challenge, or acted as seconds in a duel, 
with the penalty of death. But this attempt to 
check the evil proved utterly futile. Death was too 
severe a punishment to be inflicted for an offence 
which the public generally and the King himself re- 
garded as venial. 

J. A. De Thou tells how at the table of the Prince 
of Conde, the conversation once turned upon duel- 
ling. Some of those present defended the practice, 
whereupon the Prince " with an air of authority 
becoming his rank " condemned it as absolutely 
repugnant to God's law. It was, he added, a sin to 
draw the sword except by order of the sovereign, 
and for the defence of life and country. Yet he had 
himself challenged and fought with the Duke of 
Bouillon, a fact recorded by the latter in his memoirs 
with much complacency, although in the same 
breath he warns his sons to be meek and gentle, and 
careful of giving offence. The King could not per- 
haps seriously condemn a custom all but unanimously 



370 Henry of Navarre. [1598- 

approved by those with whom he Hved and which 
was so consonant to his own character. Yet he 
might deplore an indulgence in this privilege of 
gentle birth — for so it was esteemed — so excessive, 
that France lost every year many hundred brave 
men. The judges and those who by birth and edu- 
cation were led to regard the laws of God and man 
as of not less obligation than a conventional code of 
honour, were urgent that the King's solemn edict 
should not be allowed to remain a dead letter. Ac- 
cordingly, in 1609, a new ordinance was promulgated, 
which, as it was less severe than that of 1602, might 
have proved more efficacious, had not the murder 
of the King in the following year paralysed all 
authority. 

It would be absurd to blame Henry IV. for not 
having created a new heaven and a new earth during 
twelve years of peace indeed, but of peace disturbed 
by intrigues and cabals, by the plots of foreign and 
domestic enemies. Yet it is noticeable that histo- 
rians have generally exaggerated the well-being of the 
people during the last years of his reign. So far 
was the proverbial fowl from being in every pot, that 
there were still many parts of France where the 
lower classes scarcely knew what it was to have a 
full meal, and yet more where the standard of living 
was so low that a short harvest was followed by 
famine. But none the less the greatness, the 
astounding greatness, of the results achieved during 
so short a period by the King's efforts to restore 
material order and prosperity to his kingdom cannot 
be disputed. 



1610] Reorganisation of the Monarchy. 371 

Henry IV. had an unfeigned desire to improve 
the condition of his subjects. He beHeved their 
interest and his own to be the same. *' He who in- 
jures my people," he said, "injures me." He had 
also a true sympathy with the sufferings of the poor 
and humble, and he took some pains to discover 
what they were and how they might be relieved. 

When travelling through the country he would 
constantly stop to speak with those whom he met 
on the road, asking them whence they came and 
whither, the nature and price of the wares they car- 
ried, the profits of their trade and other details of 
their daily life. Other princes, he said, think scorn 
to know the value of a ducat ; I would know the 
exact worth of a farthing, what it buys, by what 
labour it is earned. When separated from his 
attendants in hunting or by any other chance, he 
would ask the hospitality of the nearest peasant or 
sit down with the drinking boors in some country 
inn, freely bandying talk and jest with those he met. 
He constantly vexed Sully by the demands he made 
on the treasury to satisfy his mistresses and to pay 
his gambling debts, yet it pricked his conscience that 
this self-indulgence should add to the load of taxation 
which made life harder to the poor. He tried to cheat 
his remorse by insisting that the 1,200,000 crowns he 
annually spent should be drawn from that part of the 
revenue which was not derived from the tallage. 

The popular conception of the Bearnese, that he 
was untiring in love and war and that he wished 
every peasant to have a fowl in his Sunday pot, is, 
so far as it goes, not untrue. 



2)"] 2 Henry of Navarre. [1598- 

M. Poirson, the last and most laborious French 
historian of the reign of Henry IV., has been at 
pains to show that his hero was not less industrious 
and successful in promoting the intellectual and 
moral than the material well-being of his people. 
But an impartial student can scarcely avoid the 
conclusion that his efforts in these directions both 
obtained and deserved far less success. 

The studies of the University of Paris were pe- 
formed. The task was entrusted to a commission 
of which such men as De Thou and Harlay were 
members and was therefore not ill performed. The 
study of the best classical authorities replaced that 
of the hand-books and compendiums of the Middle 
Ages. Perhaps in part, the obscurantists owed their 
defeat to the fact that they had been the inveterate 
political enemies of the King. The prince of six- 
teenth century scholarship, the " phcenix of learning," 
Joseph Scaliger, had been permitted or rather en- 
couraged by Henry IV. to leave France and settle 
at Leyden, but the scarcely less erudite Casaubon 
was summoned from Montpellier to Paris. Casau- 
bon's gentle disposition, his moderation and the 
pressure of a rapidly growing family encouraged 
Du Perron and others about the King to hope that 
he might be persuaded to conform. The proud in- 
dependence of the descendant of the lords of Ve- 
rona — or as his enemies called it his extravagant 
self-conceit — was known to be intractable. 

The care of the public library, formed by uniting 
the books of Francis I. and Catherine de' Medici, 
was entrusted to Casaubon and attempts were made 



1610] Reorganisation of the Monarchy. 373 

to induce Hugo Grotius and Justus Lipsius to re- 
store by the lustre of their names the supremacy of 
European learning to the University of Paris. New 
endowments encouraged the study of anatomy and 
other kindred subjects, which were recommended by 
their practical utility to the King's philistine com- 
mon-sense. The Huguenots in the midst of a strug- 
gle for life or death found means and leisure to 
establish schools and colleges. The children of even 
the poorest of the ReHgion had the opportunity of 
a decent education. But although Queen Jane of 
Navarre had specially distinguished herself by her 
zeal in providing for the instruction of youth in her 
hereditary dominions, her son made no attempt to 
raise the intellectual condition of the mass of his 
subjects. Even the reform of the University of 
Paris may have been due rather to a wish to intro- 
duce into that body a more loyal and less fanatical 
spirit, than to any true sympathy with erudition and 
culture. 

Henry's former tutor, Florent Chrestien, wrote to 
Scaliger that though the Princes of France excel all 
others in war and deeds of arms, learning must look 
elsewhere for patronage and encouragement. 

The last Valois kings had shown a real interest 
in learning and culture ; Henry IV. was a soldier, a 
sportsman, a practical statesman — but incapable of 
any sedentary occupation. Even his business was 
generally transacted walking up and down in his 
gardens or in the galleries of his palaces, or between 
the burnished rows of cannon in the Arsenal. The 
grandson of Margaret of Angouleme had literary 



374 Henry of Navarre. [1598- 

instincts, for in their way his letters are models of 
style, but he had none of the tastes of a scholar and 
no sympathy with scholarship. Classical studies 
were therefore not fashionable at his Court. During 
the previous reigns it was not only grave ambassa- 
dors like Paul de Foix, who carried with them a 
travelling library which was unpacked for their use 
and that of their attendants at each resting-place, 
men of pleasure like Bussy d'Amboise affected even 
if they did not possess "a taste for reading, and pro- 
fessional soldiers like the gallant Givry and St. Luc, 
who was killed while commanding the artillery dur- 
ing the siege of Amiens, were serious students of 
antiquity. Among the Huguenots the best learn- 
ing of the age was even more widely diffused ; Du 
Plessis-Mornay and La Noue were but perfected 
types of the accomplished Protestant gentlemen. 
Great nobles like La Rochefoucauld, Count of 
Roucy, were proud of their skill in writing Latin 
verses. After the accession of Henry IV. there is a 
great change in the attitude of the fashionable world 
to letters. The younger Biron, w^hen some discus- 
sion arose on an antiquarian question, showed by 
his remarks that he possessed considerable classical 
knowledge, but he did so as if ashamed, and fearful 
lest he should seem to know more than was consist- 
ent with the character of a soldier and a man of 
fashion ; a generation earlier he would have ostenta- 
tiously paraded his knowledge. Lesdiguieres, per- 
haps the most able of Henry's generals, had been 
trained to the law and was a fair scholar, but he was 
sneered at by some, as if learning and valour were 



1610] Reorganisation of the Monarchy. 375 

incompatible. A scarcely less significant symptom 
of the change in feeling was the King's boast, that 
he could transact the most difificult business with 
the help of his Chancellor who knew no Latin and 
of his Constable who could barely read or write. 

The King, who wished to decorate his new palaces 
with statues and frescoes, was a more liberal patron 
of sculptors and painters than of scholars. He paid 
pensions to promising students whom he sent to 
pursue their studies at Rome, directing his ambas- 
sador to watch over them with the care of a father. 
Some came back imitators at second or third hand 
of the Caracci ; others learnt to combine the exag- 
gerated action and defective composition of John of 
Bologna with the affectation and want of- dignity 
which had begun to be the besetting faults of French 
sculpture. 

France was exhausted by half a century of civil 
discord in which both parties had seen their hopes 
cheated and had come to suspect that the ideals they 
had cherished were unattainable. The nation was 
absorbed in the effort to repair the ruins of the 
material fabric of society, and had little energy to 
spare for artistic and literary creation. The poet, 
says the Roman Satirist, who is to sing of the loftiest 
themes must be free from the sordid cares of daily 
life. Disappointed aspirations, weariness of past 
struggles, fear of future disorders, inspired even the 
better citizens with a preference for all that appeared 
practical, approved of by sound common-sense, 
orderly and well established, with a distrust of every- 
thing that was vague, unsubstantial and Utopian. 



^']^ Henry of Navarre. ri698- 

In the many this temper produced an eagerness to 
enjoy common and material pleasures. 

When the Duke of Bouillon, writing for the 
edification of his children, contrasts the corruption 
around him with that virtuous Court of Catherine 
de' Medici, in which his boyhood had been trained, 
we smile to see the former lover of Margaret of 
Valois praising past times and affecting in his old 
age to inculcate austerity of morals. Yet there is 
abundant evidence that under Henry IV. the French 
Court was no school of virtue ; and that preachers 
and moralists complained not without reason that 
the sensuality of the upper and middle classes had 
never been so gross and unrestrained. The Court 
of the Valois had excelled in perverse and morbid 
depravity, but the restoration of public tranquillity 
under Henry IV. appears to have been followed by 
a widespread indulgence in coarse vice, and selfish 
profusion which can scarcely be paralleled, except 
possibly by what was afterwards seen at Paris under 
somewhat similar conditions during the Directory. 
The disappointed renunciation of ideal aims, ab- 
sorption in material cares, eager pursuit of animal 
pleasures, whether they be sought in the innocent 
gratifications of a respectable citizen, meat and drink, 
a warm roof and a comfortable bed, or in the more 
guilty satisfaction of sensual lusts, are scarcely com- 
patible with literary or artistic excellence. Yet, 
although the reign of Henry IV. produced no writer 
of the first rank, it was a most important period, a 
period of transition in the history of French litera- 
ture. During the Civil Wars and the years of apathy 



1610] Reorganisation of the Monarchy. 2)77 

which followed, the old school, the school in poetry 
of Marot, of Ronsard and the Pleiad, in prose of 
Rabelais and Amyot, of Montaigne and Aubigne 
passed gradually away. Men of such second-rate 
ability as Malherbe and Balzac would not have been 
able to decide the form assumed by the master- 
pieces of the next generation, had not circumstances 
inclined the taste of the times to prefer smoothness 
to vigour, a carefully chosen to a copious vocabulary, 
logical lucidity and correctness to variety of con- 
struction, to a picturesque and pregnant sententious- 
ness varied by carefully constructed sentences of 
classical prolixity, which arrest the attention of the 
reader, even though they may sometimes strain his 
patience. 

But our space forbids the attempt to sketch even 
in outline the history of French literature during the 
reign of Henry IV. Nor would it be a profitable 
task to enumerate names, even with the addition of 
a jejune criticism, unsupported by copious quota- 
tions. 




CHAPTER IX. 

THE DIVORCE AND SECOND MARRIAGE OF 
THE KING. 

1598 — 1601. 




HE country was at peace and her 
wounds were slowly healing. But 
the continuance of tranquillity, the 
enjoyment of what had already 
been secured, the realisation of 
future hopes, everything depended 
on the King's life. What if the King had succumbed 
to an illness, which was believed to have endangered 
his life in 1598, or if one of the numerous plots to 
assassinate him in that and the following years had 
been successful ? The heir to the throne, the Prince of 
Conde, was a boy of feeble constitution and character, 
his birth discredited by rumours based, it would 
seem, on better evidence than is usually the case with 
such scandals. Even if his claim to the throne were 
not challenged, to whom would the Regency be en- 
trusted ? His mother was a woman of private birth, 
defamed as an adulteress and who would have been 
publicly tried as an accomplice in the murder of her 

378 



Divorce and Second Marriage, 379 

husband, had she not purchased impunity by aban- 
doning her rehgion. All therefore who cared 
anything for the welfare of France were anxious to 
see Henry the father of legitimate children. 

To this there were two obstacles. In the first 
place, he already had a wife, but one who could 
never be the mother of his children, and secondly, 
as years went by, Gabrielle d'Estrees' influence over 
him was confirmed by long habit, and his passion 
for her became more fervent. She had reformed 
that levity of conduct, which during the earlier part 
of their connection excited the reproaches of the 
King and gave a handle to her enemies. Her lover 
treated her with the consideration due to a lawful 
wife, and expected others to show her the hke 
respect. He created her Duchess of Beaufort. He 
legitimised her children. Their baptism was cele- 
brated with all the ceremonies and pomp reserved 
for the '' Children of France." When absent, he 
wrote to her daily, and if he was not always faith- 
ful he at least paid her the compliment of simulating 
constancy ; decent hypocrisy contrasting favourably 
with the cynical effrontery which afterwards imposed 
an odious promiscuity on his lawful wife. 

Meantime Queen Margaret had been living since 
1587 in the castle of Usson in Auvergne. When, 
after her quarrel with Henry HI., her position had 
become not less unpleasant at Nerac or Pau than at 
Paris, she took refuge at Agen, a town which formed 
part of her dower. The people of Agen rose against 
her, and, trying to make her way to Ivoy, a castle 
belonging to her mother Catherine, she was seized 



380 Henry of Navarre. [1598- 

by Canaillac, Governor of Usson, who had been 
ordered by Henry III. to confine her in that castle, 
fortified as a State prison by Lewis XL But al- 
though Canaillac had passed the middle stage of 
life, was heavy in bulk and sedate in disposition, he 
could not resist the fascinations of his captive, and 
the prisoner became the mistress of the fortress as 
well as of its Governor. Yet, whatever her position, 
so long as she remained in a remote valley among 
the mountains of Auvergne, Margaret could do little 
harm, and the contemptuous toleration of her hus- 
band allowed her to live on unmolested at Usson ; 
"a hermitage," so she said, ''miraculously provided 
to serve her as an ark of safety." There she found 
solace for her isolation in books and music, as well 
as in the pleasures of the table and vulgar gallantry : 
for Margaret combined in a remarkable degree the 
coarse sensuality and intellectual refinement char- 
acteristic of the House of Valois, and to some 
extent also of her Florentine ancestors. 

Du Plessis-Mornay appears to have been the first 
of Henry's advisers earnestly to press upon him the 
duty of providing for an undisputed succession 
(1591), urging him to marry again and to cease im- 
periUing body, soul and honour in licentious intrigues. 
" Why then," said the King, '' don't you find me a 
wife?" ''There is a double difficulty," replied 
Mornay, " you have to be first unmarried ; but I 
will see what can be done." Whereupon he went to 
the legal adviser employed by Queen Margaret to 
defend her interests at Court, and assured him that 
the King had made up his mind. He had many and 




MARGARET OF VALOIS. 



1601] Divorce and Second Marriage. 381 

grave reasons which would justify him in treating 
his wife with severity. It would, therefore, be to 
the Queen's interest and honour that she should 
herself ask for a divorce, to relieve her conscience 
and for the good of the kingdom, on the ground 
that she had been married without her consent, 
within the prohibited degrees and without the papal 
dispensation. Margaret, weary of Usson and of a 
retirement which did not protect her from the im- 
portunity of her creditors, consented, and wrote a 
graceful and grateful letter to Mornay, thanking him 
for his good service and advice. But for several 
years matters made little progress. The Queen was 
very willing to agree to a divorce on the liberal 
terms proposed by her husband, the payment of her 
debts, an abundant revenue, permission to live in 
Paris with the title and precedence of Queen of 
Navarre and Duchess of Valois. She wrote again 
and again to Mornay, urging him to press on the 
business, and sought to stimulate his zeal by a 
present of 14,000 livres. But to establish the valid- 
ity of a subsequent marriage beyond dispute it was 
necessary that the divorce should be pronounced by 
a competent and generally recognised tribunal, and 
as yet the Roman Curia was hostile and not likely to 
strain a point to oblige the King of France. 

Henry himself, up to 1594, was anxious for a 
divorce and to find another wife. Then his interest 
flagged, till he again took the matter up warmly in 
1598, urging his agents at the Roman Court to 
press for the Papal sentence annulling his marriage. 
We may conjecture that his affection for Gabrielle 



382 Henry of Navarre. [1598- 

d'Estrees was sufficiently strong after the first two 
or three years of their union to render the idea of 
marrying any one else distasteful, but that it was 
not till 1598 that it could outweigh the obvious 
objections to making her his wife and Queen of 
France. Unseemly in itself, such a match would 
have failed to secure that undisputed succession, 
which was the chief advantage desired by those who 
begged the King to take to himself another bride. 
The jarring claims of those children of Henry and 
Gabrielle, who were born out of wedlock, and of the 
legitimate offspring of a subsequent marriage would 
only have added another element of discord to those 
already existing. 

The Duchess of Beaufort, had endeavoured to 
secure future support by using her influence to obtain 
favourable terms for the Dukes of Mayenne and 
Guise, and by betrothing her eldest son to the 
heiress of the Mercceurs. She also courted the favour 
of the Huguenots. Aubigne tells how on one occasion, 
when the King had good reason to complain of the 
factious conduct of some among the Protestant 
leaders, he came unexpectedly to Court and was well 
received by Henry, who bade him kiss his mistress, 
and sending for their little son Csesar from his bed, 
placed him naked as he was in his old servant's arms, 
saying that he meant in another year to commit him 
to his care, in order that he might be educated 
among those of the Religion and win their affection. 

After the conclusion of peace and when her lover 
was securely established on the throne Gabrielle per- 
suaded him to entertain more seriously the thought 



1601] Divorce and Second Marriage, 383 

of their marriage. Whenever Sully's name is men- 
tioned in his memoirs we must be on our guard 
against his mendacious self-esteem, and everything 
he tells us about Gabrielle d'Estrees is to be received 
with caution. He hated her, because he believed 
that but for her he might be the all powerful favour- 
ite and adviser of his Prince, and his hatred was 
inflamed by all the rancour which a man morbidly 
vain and wanting in generosity naturally felt towards 
one whose favours he had repaid by ingratitude. 
He also wishes to pose as the author of all good, the 
opponent of everything injurious to king or kingdom. 
Therefore he would have us beheve, that it was he 
who brought about the King's divorce, he who dis- 
suaded his master from marrying Gabrielle. Nay, 
he apparently wishes to insinuate that he did not 
shrink from complicity in a plot to murder a woman 
whose influence might be so fatal to the country. 
Throughout that prodigious monument of senile 
garrulity the Economies Royales, the ex-minister, 
to exaggerate his own importance and familiarity 
with the King, forges and falsifies letters and other 
documents ; and he is scarcely less anxious to de- 
preciate the merits and influence of others than he is 
to exalt his own. The services of Sancy, Villeroy, 
Jeannin, De Thou, of all the most trusted of the 
King's advisers are ignored, their errors or failings 
exaggerated. But the great reputation of Du Plessis- 
Mornay, his lofty character, his credit with the King, 
made him the special mark of Sully's envious malig- 
nity. The most artful malevolence sought in vain to 
detect a flaw in Mornay's integrity, but the tempta- 



384 Henry of Navarre, [1598- 

tion to attribute to himself the credit of what Mornay 
had done was irresistible to Sully. Accordingly we 
find in the Economies Royales a fictitious corre- 
spondence between Margaret of Valois and M. de 
Rosny, and an account of the events preceding the 
death of the Duchess of Beaufort which recent in- 
vestigations have shown to be little else than a 
romance. We cannot therefore give full credit to 
Sully's account of a conversation with the King, 
towards the end of 1598. Yet we may well believe 
that some such discussion as that recorded took place, 
even if Sully exaggerates the freedom with which he 
spoke to his master. 

The King, he would have us believe, began by 
saying that his ambassador at Rome and others about 
the Papal Court assured him that the Pope was anx- 
ious to serve him in the matter of his divorce, and 
that therefore he had decided to look about him for 
a wife, who might bear him an heir and prevent the 
evils of a disputed succession. He would like " that 
not impossible she," his future wife, to be beautiful, 
chaste, amiable, and accommodating in humour, 
clever, of illustrious birth and great estate ; but he 
feared such a one was either dead or not yet born. 
He then enumerated all the marriageable foreign 
princesses and French girls of high rank, beginning 
with the Infanta Isabella, whom he said he would 
take could he obtain the Low Countries with her, but 
to that her father would never consent ; to all the 
others he discovered some objection. '^ A pity," said 
Sully " that the Queen of England cannot be made 
young, or Mary of Burgundy or some other great heir- 



1601] Divorce and Second Marriage. 385 

ess of past time resuscitated for you, but since this 
may hardly be, what if you were to collect all the mar- 
riageable maidens of your kingdom, select the most 
pleasing from among them and then try to discover 
your paragon among the chosen few ? " Henry 
laughed and allowed that it was absurd to expect 
perfection, but his bride must possess three essential 
qualifications : She must have good looks, good 
temper and be capable of bearing him a son. Sully 
replied that he did not think that it could be known 
beforehand of any woman that she would satisfy the 
King in these particulars, especially in the last. '' At 
any rate," said the king, '' I know that my mistress 
would." 

By the end of 1598 it was generally known that 
the King intended to marry Madame de Beaufort. 
Queen Margaret wrote to her : *' My desires are in 
all respects the same as yours and the King's. I 
speak my mind freely to you, as to one whom I con- 
sider my sister, and honour and esteem next to the 
King." As a substantial proof of her good-will she 
executed a deed conveying her Duchy of Etampes 
to Gabrielle. 

The approaching elevation of the King's concu- 
bine to the throne excited general alarm. Not that 
the Duchess was herself unpopular. Her gentleness, 
the moderation with which she used her influence, 
employing it never to injure, and generally only to 
benefit others, won the affection of those with whom 
she came in contact ; she had no enemies, says 
Aubigne, except the necessities of the State. But 
neither her birth nor her previous life fitted her to 



386 Henry of Navarre. [1598- 

be the Queen of France ; she had greedy relations, 
and the dread of a disputed succession haunted all 
who had a thought for the future of their country. 
The prospect of so splendid a station disturbed her 
own cheerful serenity ; she became nervous and 
full of vague but distressing apprehensions. She may 
have felt that all had so far gone too smoothly; that 
fortune under so smiling a face must hide some 
treacherous intent. It was with tears and dismal 
forebodings that she left the King at Fontainebleau 
to spend the Easter of 1599 at Paris. She lodged 
at the Deanery, but on the evening of April 6th 
supped at the house of Zamet a rich Italian. This 
man, the son of a shoemaker of Lucca, and a former 
valet of Henry III., had enriched himself by usury 
and speculation. From being the servant he had 
become the boon companion of princes, who found 
him a merry and generous host, untroubled by scru- 
ples or pretensions. Gabrielle accepted an invitation 
to spend the evening of the 7th at the same house, 
but was then too unwell to leave her room. On the 
next day she was much worse and fell into violent 
convulsions ; on the 9th she was artificially delivered 
of a dead child ; towards the evening she became 
unconscious and died the morning after (April loth). 
There is as little reason to suppose that she was 
poisoned as that her neck was wrung and her soul 
carried off by the devil. Both reports were current, 
but the latter was more generally believed by the 
populace, to whom it seemed that her great power 
over the King must be due to some supernatural 
cause. No contemporary writer acquainted with the 



1601] Divorce and Second Marriage. 387 

Court, except Sully, hints that there was any plot 
against her life. 

The despair and grief of the King were extreme. 
Violet, the colour in which the sovereigns of France 
mourned, was not sombre enough to express his 
sorrow. He clad himself in black. He received in 
gloomy state the condolences of his Parliaments and 
of the ambassadors of foreign powers. No cere- 
monial was omitted, which would have been due to 
Gabrielle d'Estrees had she been the crowned con- 
sort of the King of France. But no courtly observ- 
ance could do her such honour as the unfeigned tears 
of the Princess of Orange^ and of Catherine of 
Navarre. The latter, whom her brother, with little 
regard for her feelings and for her long attachment 
to the Count of Soissons, had lately married to the 
Duke of Bar, forgot all unkindness and wrote in 
words of which we should be sorry to doubt the sin- 
cerity. '' My dear King, I am well aware no words 
can heal your great grief. I only write these to 
assure you that I share in it as completely as I needs 
must, owing to my extreme love for you and to my 
own loss of so perfect a friend. I much wish I had 
been with you, to offer you in your afifliction all the 
humble service I owe you. Believe me, my dear 
King, I shall always act a mother's part by my 
nephews and nieces. I humbly beg that you will 
remember that you have promised me my niece. If 
you will let me have her I will treat her with as 
much love and care as if she were my own daughter. 
... If it pleased God, my King, that I could lighten 

* The daughter of Coligny and widow of William the Silent. 



388 Henry of Navarre. [1598- 

your grief by the sacrifice of some years of my life, 
I would pray with all my heart that it might be so, 
and upon this truth I kiss you a thousand times, my 
dear and brave King." Her brother assured her in 
his reply that her sympathy was a consolation to him 
in his grievous sorrow, a sorrow as incomparable as 
the object for whom he mourned. That henceforth 
regrets and lamentations must accompany him to the 
tomb. Since God had caused him to be born not 
for himself, but for his people, all his thoughts and 
cares should henceforth be devoted to the welfare 
and preservation of his kingdom. '' The root," he 
concluded, " of my love is dead, and will never put 
forth another branch." 

If the King expected no more pleasure in life, if 
henceforth he was determined to live for his country 
alone, then, as soon as he was released by the Papal 
sentence from the ties which bound him to Margaret 
of Valois, there could no longer be any reason to 
delay his union with a Princess who might bear the 
longed-for Dauphin. 

The reigning Grand Duke of Tuscany had a niece, 
the daughter of his brother and predecessor, Francis, 
and of Jane of Austria daughter of the Emperor 
Ferdinand. The King's advisers, undeterred by the 
many ills of which a Florentine marriage had before 
been the cause, selected this young lady, Mary de' 
Medici, as, on the whole, the most eligible partner 
of his throne. The Grand Duke was wealthy and 
could give his niece a dowry which might extinguish 
a debt due to him, and leave a useful balance. No 
sooner was Gabrielle d'Estrees dead than the Flor- 



1601] Divorce and Second Marriage. 389 

entine envoy and Villeroy began busily to negotiate 
the marriage treaty. 

But while his ministers were higgling about the 
terms on which he should sell his hand, Henry had 
given away his heart, or what remained of it ; some 
portion, we should hke to believe, and that the 
better part, rested in Gabrielle's grave. For it was 
to the fascination she exercised over the baser parts 
of his nature, his senses and his fancy, that his next 
mistress owed her fatal power. 

After spending two months at Fontainebleau, 
where everything reminded him of his loss, he deter- 
mined to seek distraction in a visit to the cheerful 
banks of the Loire. On the road to Blois lay Male- 
sherbes, a castle of Francis de Balzac, lord of En- 
tragues and Governor of Orleans, a man of tarnished 
reputation, but of good family and the husband of 
Marie Touchet, formerly mistress of Charles IX., 
and the mother of a royal bastard, Charles of Valois, 
Count of Angouleme, to whom the old Queen 
Catherine, passing over her daughter Margaret, had 
left her county of Auvergne. Among three children 
born by Marie Touchet to her husband, was a 
daughter Henriette, not surpassingly beautiful, for 
her nose was not above reproach, her lips were thin 
and when in repose ill-tempered, and there was 
more intelligence than charm in her high and well- 
formed forehead, yet marvellously fascinating by 
her grace, her vivacity, and her ready wit. 

Few who were dazzled by her bright eyes and 
mobile smile could pause to note and criticise the 
defects of so brilliant a creature. Henry, when in 



390 Henry of Navarre. [1598- 

the first week of June he came to Malesherbes, only 
intended a stay of a few days to be spent hunting 
in the woods which fringe the narrow valley of the 
Essonne. Before twenty-four hours were over the 
disconsolate and elderly mourner was himself in the 
toils of this Delilah of eighteen ; the end of July 
found him still lingering at her feet, and when he 
left it was to follow his new flame and her mother to 
Paris. 

The room which Henry occupied during his long 
and frequent visits to Malesherbes still exists, hung 
with the same old tapestry, on which the eyes of the 
King must often have rested, the vision of Ezekiel, 
and below a quaint legend : 

Mort, feninie et temps, tout soit viel et antique 
Mondaine atnoiir et chastete pudique 
Tout pretidra fin. 

It may happen that a mourner is attracted by a 
resemblance in character or outward presentment to 
what is no more, so striking and close that the new 
passion is in some sort to be excused as but the con- 
tinuation of the old. But it must have been because 
nothing in Henriette d' Entragues could remind him 
of what he had lost in Gabrielle, that the King was 
so easily fascinated by her. No comparison was 
challenged, in which his judgment might have been 
biassed by tender regret. Gabrielle's regular features, 
her soft and alluring beauty were in keeping with a 
gentle and placid disposition. She had played the 
part of a mistress with the modest dignity of an 
honourable woman. Henriette had been carefully 



1601] Divorce and Second Marriage, 391 

brought up by her mother, who, it was told, had 
stabbed with her own hand a page presumptuous 
enough to make love to her daughter ; yet, though 
an inexperienced girl of barely eighteen, she had all 
the arts and tricks and depraved instincts of a cour- 
tesan, eager to profit by the passions she inspired 
without sharing. Her somewhat swarthy and viva- 
cious features, her expressive eyes sometimes melt- 
ing, oftener cold and imperious, her nervous mouth, 
her slim and active shape, were well in keeping with 
her restless and unscrupulous ambition, hermahcious 
and cynical wit. 

Since the King had been willing to marry the 
Duchess of Beaufort, there appeared to Henriette 
and her family to be no reason why, if they played 
their cards well, she should not be Queen. On 
public grounds there would be less to urge against 
such a match ; no question could be raised as to the 
legitimacy of her children. Mademoiselle d'Entra- 
gues therefore did her best to inflame the King's 
passion. She herself would not bargain with her 
sovereign. She was his to command, and she grate- 
fully received his gifts ; rich jewels and a princely 
fortune. But her father's sense of honour was so 
nice that he could bear no blot on his scutcheon, and 
she was carefully watched by her mother. At length 
early in October, the King placed in her hands the 
following amazing document : '' We, Henry by the 
Grace of God, King of France and Navarre, promise 
and swear before God and by our faith and kingly 
word to Monsieur Francois de Balzac, Sieur d'En- 
tragues, etc., etc., that he, giving us to be our consort 



392 Henry of Navarre, [1598- 

{pour compagne) demoiselle Henriette Catharine de 
Balzac, his daughter, provided that within six months 
from the present day she become pregnant and bear 
a son, then and forthwith we will take her to wife 
and publicly marry her in face of our Holy Church," 
etc. After this D'Entragues no longer refused to 
close his eyes to his daughter's dishonour. The 
negotiations with the Grand Duke of Tuscany were 
proceeding apace ; it was also known that the King 
had been able to find consolation in other quarters. 
The young lady and her friends shrank from the risk 
of further delay. They no doubt hoped that her 
more intimate relations with the King would give 
Henriette not less influence over him than had been 
exercised by her predecessor. In November (1599), 
Henriette d'Entragues was publicly installed as 
reigning favourite in a house sumptuously furnished 
for her; such a bird, said Henry, deserved a fine 
cage. 

In the early summer of 1600 the room of the Mar- 
chioness of Verneuil — so she was now styled — was 
struck by lightning, and the premature birth of a 
dead child relieved the King from his conditional 
promise. Had Henriette borne him a living son the 
situation would have been awkward, for already in 
the previous March the French plenipotentiaries had 
signed their master's marriage contract with Mary 
of Medici. The marriage itself was celebrated by 
proxy at Florence on the 3d of October. On the 
17th, escorted by a Tuscan and Papal fleet, the new 
Queen of France sailed from Leghorn. Neptune, 
says Malherbe, anxious to contemplate her charms 



1601] Divorce and Second Marriage, 393 

as long as possible, showed his gallantry by so buf- 
feting her splendid galley, inlaid without with ivory, 
mother of pearl and lapis lazuli, and hung within 
with cloth of gold and silk brocade, that it was 
obliged to seek shelter in Porto Finale on the Ligu- 
rian coast. It was not till November 3d that she 
reached Marseilles, whence she proceeded by easy 
stages to Lyons. There she was received with much 
joy by the citizens, among whom were many of her 
own countrymen. In that town, the emporium of 
all trade between France and Italy, the natives of 
Florence, Genoa and Lucca had churches and even 
streets of their own. In the church of the Celes- 
tines was the magnificent tomb of the Pazzi, the 
exiled enemies of the house of Medici. This the 
paltry spite of the new Queen of France condescended 
to mutilate. Such a proof of a rancorous and un- 
generous disposition was well calculated to alarm and 
disgust her husband, so magnanimous in his treat- 
ment of opponents whether alive or dead, and who 
used to say that of all faults vindictiveness appeared 
to him the most unpardonable. 

Henry had been actively engaged in a little war 
against Savoy, and this had been his excuse for not 
receiving his bride when she landed in France. He 
had soothed her disappointment by letters couched 
in his most amorous vein. Such descriptions of her 
had reached him that he loved her, he said, not as a 
husband ought to love his wife, but as a passionate 
lover adores his mistress. He was suffering from a 
fever, but the sight of her would cure him. All this 
time, when he was not with Henriette, and he had 



394 Henry of Navarre. Li 598- 

sent for her to Dauphiny, he was writing to her " his 
sweetheart, his very own " in terms of more heartfelt 
tenderness. The King joined his wife a day or two 
after her arrival at Lyons, where the Cardinal Legate 
gave the nuptial benediction in great pomp to the 
newly wedded pair. 

Henry professed to be much pleased with the per- 
son and the gentle and submissive manners of his 
wife. Mary of Medici, though twenty years younger 
thanherhusband, wasno longer a girl, and a full and 
rather heavy figure made her look older than her 
age, twenty-six. She had pretty hair, a good com- 
plexion, fine arms and a white skin, which she dis- 
played liberally, but her forehead was heavy, her 
nose coarse, her mouth sensual, her flat bold eyes 
wanting in expression. Even when compared with 
the crowd of full-blown Flemish nymphs who sur- 
round her in the allegorical compositions of Rubens, 
she appears wanting in grace and distinction. The 
Queen looked good-natured, and was not unwilling 
to please her husband, but from the first he was 
plagued by the pretensions and quarrels of her Itahan 
followers. Two of these were destined to exercise 
a fatal influence on the fortunes of their mistress 
and of France. Leonora Dosi or GaUgai had been 
brought up with Mary of Medici as a humble play- 
fellow and companion, a black-eyed swarthy little 
creature like a gipsy changeling, full of malice and 
ambition, whose restless energy had won a complete 
ascendancy over her phlegmatic mistress. The 
knowledge of her power over the Queen induced a 
certain Concini, a younger son of good family — his 




MARY DE' MEDICI. 
From the painting by F. Porbus in Prado Museum in Madrid. 



1601] Divorce and Second Marriage, 395 

father had been the Grand Duke's minister, — who 
hoped to find his fortune in France, to pay Leonora 
some court. He was only too successful. Her 
ardent passion scorned all disguise. Their amorous 
dalliance in the Queen's room and presence provoked 
malicious comment, and Mary of Medici, not ill-dis- 
posed to the handsome gallant on her own account, 
was induced by her confidante to treat him with an 
indulgence compromising to both mistress and maid. 
The Galigai was not loved and Concini was detested 
by the Italians about the Queen. Henry therefore 
had abundant warning that they were ambitious and 
dangerous intriguers. He refused to listen to his 
wife's entreaties that Leonora should be appointed 
her Bedchamber woman. The proposal was, he said, 
preposterous ; the place was one which had always 
been held by a lady of quality. If Leonora and 
Concini would marry he would gladly find a dowry, 
but on condition that they returned to Florence, — a 
suggestion received by Mary of Medici with sullen 
obstinacy. The thought of parting with Leonora 
was unendurable, and Concini grew daily in favour. 
Eventually Leonora obtained the desired appoint- 
ment, but through the intervention of Henriette 
d'Entragues with whom she formed a temporary al- 
liance—a result well calculated to increase the re- 
sentment of the Queen, who saw her husband grant 
to the suggestion of his mistress what he had refused 
to the prayers of his wife. 

On the 20th of January, 1600, peace was con- 
cluded with Savoy. The King declared that his 
presence was needed in the North, but that the 



396 Henry of Navarre, [1598- 

health of the Queen must not be endangered by a 
hurried journey in an exceptionally cold winter. 
Leaving her therefore to follow by slow stages, he 
rode post to Fontainebleau, to throw himself into 
the arms of Madame de Verneuil. 

Two or three weeks later the Queen reached Paris. 
On the very evening of her arrival Henry per- 
suaded the Duchess of Nemours to introduce 
Henriette to his wife. As she came forward he 
explained who she was, '* This young lady is my 
mistress, she will be your very obedient and humble 
servant." As a scanty courtesy appeared to hold 
out little prospect of the fulfilment of this promise, 
he placed his hand on Henriette's head and bent it 
down till she had kissed the hem of the Queen's 
dress. 

He must be allowed to have so contrived the intro- 
duction of the rivals as to exasperate to the utmost 
the tempers of both women. The ideal of married 
life which he appears to have formed was such as 
might have occurred to an amiable Turk emanci- 
pated from the jealous prejudices of the East. A 
Sultana to be the mother of his heir, and a reigning 
favourite chosen from among a bevy of women, — to 
one or another of whom the royal handkerchief 
might from time to time be thrown, — were to show 
their gratitude for the good-humoured indulgence 
with which he was prepared to treat them, by living 
amiably and cheerfully together. To realise such a 
dream of domestic felicity would nowhere be easy, 
but the attempt could hardly have been made under 
conditions more adverse than those against which 



1601] Divorce and Second Marriage. 397 

Henry IV. had to struggle : his wife, disposed to 
jealousy, ruled by unscrupulous favourites, alter- 
nately passionate and sullenly obstinate; his mistress 
a very demon of malice, with a cold heart and a hot 
head; both eagerly watched by those who sought 
to use their ambition and their mutual hatred to 
annoy the King and perplex his policy. 

A letter of the Duchess of Thouars has preserved 
a vivid picture of the royal household. She found, 
she says, the King and Queen walking up and down 
together, while Mademoiselle de Guise— who, it was 
whispered, since she could not be Queen, would have 
been satisfied to be reigning mistress — sat embroider- 
ing strips of canvas. Madame de Verneuil came 
into the room at her pleasure and though the Queen 
flushed with anger, began to talk to her, or flouted 
and jeered at the King. The Court was full of 
jealousies and quarrels and not much frequented by 
people of quality. The Queen was on bad terms 
with Madame de Guercheville (a lady of character 
and the first in position of her French attendants) 
and the King with Signora Leonora. 

Matters were scarcely improved by the birth of 
the longed-for heir — Sept. 27, 1601. Henry indeed 
was delighted and characteristically wrote to Madame 
de Verneuil, expatiating on the beauty of her rival's 
baby. There is a touching simplicity in his apparent 
confidence that she would sympathise with his pride 
and delight in the child. 

Henriette herself gave birth to a boy a month 
later, and in the pride of her motherhood scoffed 
at the banker's fat daughter, who had indeed got a 



398 



Henry of Navarre. 



[1601 



son, but not the Dauphin, for the King was her 
husband, she had his written promise, and it was she 
who held the Dauphin in her arms ; he at any rate, 
she added, should not go to St. Germains to be 
brought up with the royal bastards. 





CHAPTER X. 

WAR WITH SAVOY — SPANISH INTRIGUES — CON- 
SPIRACIES OF BIRON AND OF THE ENTRAGUES. 

I 599-1609. 

HE Peace of Vervins had not decided 
whether or how the Marquisate of 
Saluzzo, occupied by the Duke of Sa- 
voy during the civil troubles in France, 
should be restored. In the winter 
of 1599, Charles Emmanuel came 
himself to the French Court, trusting by means of 
400,000 crowns, which he brought with him, to secure 
such support among the King's advisers, that he 
would be allowed to keep his acquisition on easy 
terms. He was indignant that his father-in-law, 
Philip n., passing over the Duchess of Savoy, should 
have bestowed the Netherlands on her younger sister 
Isabella, and offered, if well treated by Henry IV., 
to help him, when the time came, to attack the 
House of Austria in Italy and Germany. But the 
French Government persisted in demanding the im- 
mediate cession of the Marquisate or of an equivalent. 
Since the Duke, on futile pretexts, delayed to 
accept either the one or the other alternative 

399 



400 Henry of Navarre, [1599- 

war was declared against Savoy (August, 1600). 
When operations commenced the season was late 
and the snow already deep on the mountains. The 
Duke was assisted by 4,000 Swiss sent by the Spanish 
Governor of Milan and by the ill-will of Biron the 
principal French general, yet such was the energy of 
Lesdiguieres and of the King, so effective the new 
organisation of the army, that before the end of the 
year Charles Emmanuel was suing for peace and had 
reason to esteem himself fortunate that he was able 
to persuade the King to accept an indemnity of 
800,000 crowns with the county of Bresse and other 
lordships on the western side of the Alps, forming 
the modern department of the Ain. Fort St. Cathe- 
rine, built by the Dukes of Savoy to be a constant 
threat to the Genevese, had been taken by the King 
during the campaign. It was now razed, never again 
to be rebuilt (Jan., 1560). 

The Duke of Savoy, after his fruitless visit to the 
Court of France, hearing the taunt that he had carried 
away with him nothing but the mud of his winter 
journey, replied: '' The mud can be brushed off, but I 
have left behind me traces, which the sword alone 
can obHterate." An adept in intrigue, he had noticed 
the restless discontent of many of those nobles who 
had fought on the King's side against the League. 
They contrasted their rewards with the favours ob- 
tained by their former adversaries and complained 
of their master's ingratitude. Their importance had, 
they felt, depended on the war, and was likely fur- 
ther to diminish as the country became more settled, 
and the authority of the Crown better established. 



1609] War with Savoy. 401 

Foremost among these malcontents was the Mar- 
shal Duke of Biron, the inheritor of his father's 
ambition, vanity and martial reputation. If miser- 
liness and ingratitude were defects in Henry's 
character, he had not shown them in his treatment 
of the companion-in-arms whose life he had twice 
saved in battle at the risk of his own. He had made 
him Marshal, Duke, and Peer of France, Governor 
of the wealthy and important frontier province of 
Burgundy. But no rewards appeared adequate to 
Biron's extravagant estimate of his deserts, no wealth 
could fill the bottomless purse of an inveterate 
gambler and spendthrift. Biron liked to boast that 
his own and his father's services had given the King 
his crown, and made no secret of his disgust that he 
was not all powerful at Court. His need of money 
was as well known as his extravagant ambition, and 
he became the dupe of alchemists and of adepts in 
occult sciences, who fooled him with the prospect 
of boundless wealth and high fortune. 

The Duke of Savoy found such a man a willing 
recipient of a part of the treasure he had brought for 
the corruption of the French Court, and ready to 
incline his ear to any scheme which impHed his own 
aggrandisement. One La Fin, an adventurer and 
charlatan, who, after wasting his own substance in 
the pursuit of the philosopher's stone, had acquired 
the confidence of the Marshal by his skill in alchemy, 
astrology and magic, conducted the negotiations 
between him and Charles Emmanuel. Nothing defin- 
ite was settled before the war of 1600. The support 

of Spain was indispensable to the confederates, but 
26 



402 Henry of Navarre. [1599- 

Philip III. was phlegmatic and timid : his minister, 
the Duke of Lerma, as incompetent as he was greedy 
and aspiring, distrusted his own ability to cope with 
such an adversary as Henry IV. Accordingly the 
Spanish Court declared that during the King's life 
nothing could be done, suggesting at the same time 
that this obstacle might be removed. Various plans 
for the assassination of Henrj^ were discussed, as well 
as the terms on which the Duke of Savoy would 
bestow his daughter's hand on the Marshal. 

Henry knew something of what was going on, and 
took such precautions that Biron was compelled to 
assist in the defeat of his confederate. On the con- 
clusion of the war, thinking that nothing could be 
done for the present, and wishing to guard against 
the danger of detection, Biron made a merit of con- 
fessing to the King that he had had some dealings 
with Savoy and in a moment of pique had asked the 
hand of the Duke's daughter ; and for whatever he 
had done amiss he implored a pardon which was 
readily granted. 

Scarcely however had the peace been signed before 
Biron was again listening to the offers of the Duke 
of Savoy and of the Spaniards. The hand of a 
princess, a dowry of 300,000 crowns and the inde- 
pendent sovereignty of Burgundy were irresistible 
baits to his ambition and poverty. He preferred, 
he said, death on the scaffold to an almshouse, and 
became the centre of all who plotted against King 
or country in France. He affected to be a zealous 
Catholic and deplored the sinful tolerance of the 
King, while at the same time he and Bouillon en- 



1609] War with Savoy. 403 

deavoured to persuade the Huguenots that their 
extermination had been promised to the Pope. 

The towns were excited by an artfully disseminated 
report that the hated pancarte, or tax on sales, was 
but the beginning of a new system of fiscal oppres- 
sion. The inhabitants of those provinces which were 
exempt from or had compounded for the gabelle, 
were informed that Sully intended to impose a 
uniform salt tax on the whole kingdom. 

It is not likely that any definite treaty was drawn 
up between the Marshal and his foreign allies ; but 
the understanding appears to have been, that, after 
the King and his family — '' the lion and his whelps " 
— had been cleared out of the way, the Crown of 
France should be declared elective and the great 
vassals, like the Princes of the Empire, be practically 
sovereign in their respective territories. An inde- 
pendence as great as that of the free imperial cities 
would, it was hoped, induce the larger towns to 
acquiesce in the disruption of the kingdom. Such 
a scheme was well calculated to tempt the selfish 
ambition of the more powerful nobles. The Con- 
stable Montmorency, Epernon and many others 
appear to have been privy — at least in part — to the 
conspiracy. The half-brother of Henriette d'En- 
tragues, the Count of Auvergne, took a more active 
part in the plot, and his sister certainly knew some- 
thing of what was going on. The restless ambition 
of Bouillon could not resist the temptation of the 
sovereignty of an independent Protestant State to be 
formed beyond the Loire, but he attempted in vain to 
draw the other Huguenot leaders into the design. 



404 H-enry of Navarre, [1599- 

In September, 1601, Henry was at Calais, and 
Queen Elizabeth came to Dover, partly in the hope 
that her old ally would visit her to discuss how best 
they might humble Spain. Henry IV. would gladly 
have done so, but he feared to alarm the Catholics, 
and was unwilling to do anything which might lead 
to an immediate renewal of the war. He sent Biron 
to offer his excuses and regrets, and Elizabeth in- 
vited the Duke to accompany her to London. 
Taking him by the hand, as he was talking to her in 
a room of the Tower, she led him to a window, and 
pointed to where the once loved head of Essex was 
rotting in wind and rain. '* Had he but confessed 
that he deserved death I would have pardoned him. 
He bowed before the headsman, because his pride 
would not endure to stoop to me. If I grieved for 
the death of that poor wretch, it was for his in- 
gratitude." Then looking fixedly into the Marshal's 
restless and sinister eyes, deep set in his swarthy 
face, she continued : " If the King would believe 
me, there are as many heads which need to be cut 
off in Paris as in London." 

That same month the Dauphin Lewis was born ; 
perhaps Biron's heart misgave him, more probably 
he distrusted his confidant, with whom he was no 
longer on the best of terms, for he wrote to La Fin, 
" God has given the King a son, let us forget our 
dreams." Yet shortly after he renewed, through 
another agent, his negotiations with Spain and 
Savoy. La Fin, on the offer of a free pardon and 
great rewards, came to Fontainebleau, told all he 
knew, and placed in the King's hands letters 



1609] War with Savoy. 405 

written by Biron and containing ample proof of his 
treason. 

Henry, alarmed at the extent of the conspiracy, 
wrote to Biron, that what he had heard from La Fin 
had entirely satisfied him, and begged him to come 
to court ; while he himself hurried into the western 
provinces, where he feared the discontent of the 
towns and peasantry and the influence among the 
Huguenots of the Dukes of Thouars and Bouillon. 
He reassured the Protestants, contradicted the 
malicious reports about new imposts and the exten- 
sion of the salt tax and received protestations of 
loyalty, which it was politic to beheve, from Mont- 
morency and Epernon. The latter he brought back 
with him to Fontainebleau, and he once more sum- 
moned Biron. If he obeyed and came, he would 
not believe a word of the charges against him. Con- 
scious of guilt the Marshal would gladly have stayed 
away; but Sully had stripped the fortresses of 
Burgundy of their guns, on the pretext of replacing 
them with better artillery ; 6,000 Swiss and French 
troops commanded by loyal officers were quartered 
in the province and in the neighbouring districts ; as 
many more were on the march. Montmorency and 
Epernon had drawn back. The Huguenots would 
not listen to Bouillon ; Spain, averse to active inter- 
ference in France, would certainly not come to his 
assistance. The short campaign of 1600 had in- 
spired the Duke of Savoy with a prudent dread of 
French arms. Biron had no choice but to obey or 
to fly the country, a powerless and dishonoured 
exile. He therefore determined to go to Fontaine- 



4o6 Henry of Navarre, 1599- 

bleau, to appeal to the King's old friendship, and to 
oppose a brazen denial to any charges brought 
against him, which would be, as he supposed, little 
more than vague surmises resting on no certain 
evidence. 

No one was less vindictive and more humane than 
Henry IV., and we may well believe his assurance 
that if his own safety alone and not that of his 
family and country had been at stake, he would still 
have pardoned his old friend and companion in arms. 
As it was, he assured Sully that if Biron would make 
a clean breast, confess everything and sue for pardon, 
all should be forgiven and forgotten. He probably 
justified such clemency by the reflection that the 
Duke after such abasement would no longer be 
dangerous. He bade the minister go to him and 
advise him to conceal nothing, and to hope every- 
thing from his master's affection. But Biron w^as 
obdurate. He protested both to Sully and to the 
King, with whom he had two interviews, that he 
had been foully calumniated, that he had done 
nothing, knew nothing except what he had already 
confessed at Lyons. 

The evening of the second day after his arrival he 
played cards till after midnight at the Queen's table ; 
as he rose to leave, the King called him aside : 
" Biron, you know that I have loved you. Confess 
the truth to me and I will pardon you." Again 
Biron said he had nothing to confess. '' I see," 
replied Henry, " that I shall learn nothing from you. 
Perhaps the Count of Auvergne will tell me more. 
Good-bye, Baron de Biron." As soon as he passed 



1609] 



War with Savoy. 407 



the door he was arrested by the Captain of the 
Guard, who asked for his sword. The Marshal 
broke out into laments and protestations. What! 
his sword that had done such service! Was this 
the reward of his campaigns, his thirty-two wounds, 
his father's merits? He must and would speak to 
the King; at length he surrendered his sword and 
was led to the Bastille, where his captivity was shared 
by the Count of Auvergne. 

Biron was forthwith arraigned of high treason 
before the Parliament. The peers of the realm were 
summoned to take their place among the judges, as 
was customary when one of their number was on his 
trial. But none appeared. They were unwilling to 
condemn yet dared not acquit. The evidence of the 
guilt of the accused was overwhelming and the 
court unanimously sentenced him to a traitor's 
death (July 29, 1602). 

The Chancellor and other officials went to the 
Bastille to communicate the judgment to the pris- 
oner. He was occupied in astrological calculations, 
seeking to discover his fate from the stars. When 
he learnt on more certain authority what it was to 
be, he burst forth in a passion of violent invective. 
Was this the King's gratitude ? Why did he refuse 
to pardon him and let greater culprits go scot free ? 
How many times had Epernon betrayed him, and 
Mayenne ? Queen Elizabeth was ready to forgive 
Essex, had he asked for mercy. Well, if he must 
die, he must, but the King had not learnt all his 
secret, and never should from him. Even yet he 
could not believe that he would be executed. So 



4o8 Henry of Navarre, [1599- 

contrary to all precedent did it seem that a great 
noble and officer of the Crown should be capitally 
punished for conspiracy against the King's life and 
the peace of the country. He showed no vestige of 
religious feeling ; he would not even pray, fearing, 
says a contemporary, the devil more than God. But 
he bade those about him tell the people that he died 
a good Catholic ; he would send no message to his 
mother because she was a heretic. He wished it to 
be believed that he died a martyr, and thus to stim- 
ulate the zeal of the fanatics, who daily plotted 
against the King's life. 

When he was brought out to the scaffold in the 
courtyard of the Bastille, for he was spared the igno- 
miny of the Place de Greve, the spectators marvelled 
that a man famous for the most undaunted valour, 
should on that last scene display so little self- 
possession or dignity. But it was rage not fear, the 
hope that at the last he would be pardoned and bitter 
disappointment that this hope was not realised, 
which made him three times snatch the bandage from 
his eyes, threaten the executioner that he would 
strangle him if he but laid a finger on him, and alarm 
those who stood around by his fierce words and angry 
gestures. At length the headsman took him una- 
wares and with marvellous dexterity struck off at a 
blow his bull-necked head ; three times it is said to 
have bounded from the ground, '' impelled by the 
fury which possessed it." 

Henry IV. was probably glad that Biron had died 
without making any full and public confession. He 
had learnt all that it concerned him to know from 



1609] War with Savoy. 



409 



La Fin and from the base terror of the Count of 
Auvergne, who, to save his Hfe, offered, King's son 
though he was, to play the part of a spy and to con- 
tinue to communicate with his confederates in order 
that he might disclose their plans to the Government. 
The King neither desired a war with Spain and 
Savoy, whose ambassadors expressed to him their 
masters' satisfaction that he had crushed so danger- 
ous a conspiracy, nor to disturb the peace of the 
country by punishing the great nobles who had been 
to a greater or less extent the accomplices of the 
Duke of Biron. 

Bouillon after disobeying repeated commands to 
come to Court, and conscious that he had carried his 
ingratitude and treason further than others, fled the 
country and sought a refuge with his brother-in-law 
the Elector Palatine. He tried to excite sympathy 
as a sufferer for the Protestant cause, and did what 
he could to persuade the Germans that the King of 
France had become a persecutor, at the very moment 
when Henry was negotiating for the formation of a 
league of the German Protestants, the main object 
of which was to be the election of a non-Austrian 
prince as King of the Romans. Failing in this 
Bouillon retired to Sedan, the impregnable capital 
of his wife's dominions. The execution of Biron was 
an impressive warning that the game of treason could 
not henceforth be played with a light heart and the 
certainty of impunity ; but a fanatic does not pause 
to weigh consequences, and an assassin may hope 
to escape in the confusion and consternation of 
his success. The notorious book of Mariana, De 



4IO Henry of Navarre, [1599- 

Rege et Regis Institutione (Toledo, 1599 — Mayence, 
1605) had justified tyrannicide, and glorified Jean 
Chastel, and the King, says Aubigne, who feared 
nothing else, dreaded the Jesuit's knife. The 
Jesuits, indeed pointed out that Mariana was a 
rebel to authority, the leader of the Spanish faction 
and the chief opponent of their General Aquaviva ; 
that his book was no exposition of their true doc- 
trine, that they did not teach regicide, nor even the 
supremacy of the Pope in temporal matters — at least 
he had but an extraordinary supremacy, one only to 
be used when absolutely necessary for the salvation 
of the souls of the faithful. It was a vile calumny to 
call them the tools of Spain at the very moment 
when they were being persecuted by the King of 
Spain and his Dominican Inquisition. All this and 
much more was urged by Father Cotton, afterwards 
the King's complaisant confessor, who had been 
allowed to come to Court to plead the cause of his 
Order. 

Cotton was the very man for the task, supple, un- 
scrupulous, the typical Jesuit of Protestant contro- 
versy, disarming suspicion by an apparent simplicity 
which bordered on folly. Everything that persua- 
sion, everything that intrigue could effect was done 
to induce the King to permit the Order to return 
to Paris. They only wished to be allowed to reopen 
their schools. They would not preach. They would 
obey the ordinary. There were no bounds to their 
submissive humility. His mistress Henriette, La 
Varenne his confidant and pandar, the majority of 
his Catholic ministers, urged the King to gratify the 



1609] War with Spain. 411 

Pope and to prove his love of toleration by allowing 
the poor fathers to return. Sully vainly pointed out 
that the Jesuits, who were the soul of the counter 
Reformation, who were supreme at the Courts of 
Vienna and Brussels, must necessarily be the in- 
veterate opponents of a policy based on toleration, 
and which aimed at overthrowing the power of the 
Hapsburgs by consoHdating German Protestantism. 
" No doubt," replied his master, '' but I must do 
one of two things : Receive them and learn by ex- 
perience the value of their protestations and prom- 
ises, or by a decided refusal reduce them to such 
despair, that they will certainly attempt my life, 
which will be made so wretched by the constant fear 
of dagger or poison that I would far rather be 
dead." The Parliament protested in vain. The 
decree authorising the return of the Order was regis- 
tered (September, 1603). The King showed the 
Jesuits much favour, liberally endowed their college 
at La Fleche and other institutions. But he at the 
same time allowed the Huguenots to open their 
place of worship at Charenton, and endeavoured to 
persuade them by word and deed that they might 
trust to his affection and policy for protection against 
their enemies. The Jesuits had hoped with the aid 
of their friends among his advisers to make Henry 
their confederate in the struggle against heresy. 
When they found that he was still the ally of their 
opponents and the strength of the resistance to the 
further progress of Romanism, were they not likely 
in their disappointment to become even more bitter 
and dangerous enemies, and that too, as Sully said, 



412 Henry of Navarre. L1599- 

after they had been admitted into the very heart of 
the place ? 

Modern historians have shown that the " Grand 
Design," attributed to Henry IV., of a Christian 
Commonwealth composed of fifteen Confederate 
States, Protestant and Catholic, republican and 
monarchical, elective and hereditary, was an inven- 
tion of Sully's vanity and leisure. Such a visionary 
scheme would not have recommended itself to the 
essentially practical mind of the King, the aim of 
whose policy if less ideal and disinterested was at 
least more attainable. 

The Peace of Vervins ended the hostilities in the 
field between the two countries ; but indirectly, and 
with the weapons of diplomacy and intrigue, the 
struggle between P>ance and the heirs of Charles V. 
was carried on with unabated animosity. Henry 
IV. complained with good ground, that the insub- 
ordination of his nobles, the disappointed ambition 
of his captains, the humours of his wife, the far- 
reaching hopes and rancour of his mistress, the 
troublesome fanaticism and ignorant prejudices of a 
part of his people and clergy were encouraged and 
inflamed by Spanish intrigue : that all who plotted 
or attempted anything against him or his Govern- 
ment, did so with the full assurance of Spanish help, 
or of finding, at the worst, a refuge on Spanish 
territory. 

But he was himself not less assiduous in his efforts 
to injure the House of Hapsburg, not less careful to 
encourage its enemies and to prepare by his diplo- 
macy allies for himself in the war, upon which he 



1609] Spanish Intrigues, 413 

was determined as soon as he had re-established 
order, restored the finances of France, reorganised 
his army and collected sufficient resources for a 
struggle destined to change the face of Europe. 
For it was no doubt his hope to separate the 
Netherlands from Spain, to unite the Protestant 
princes of Germany in a firm alliance, and with their 
help to deprive the Austrian House of the Imperial 
crown, while he at the same time assisted the Italian 
princes to drive the Spaniards out of the peninsula. 
Had he been able to effect this, even without any 
extension of territory, France would have become 
the arbitress of Europe. But he contemplated no 
such disinterested policy. He would have been glad 
to annex the whole of the Netherlands, and, if Dutch 
love of independence and English jealousy made 
this impossible, he at least hoped to obtain Artois, 
Hainault and Franche Comte, with Roussillon, as 
the reward of his efforts for the common cause. It 
was thought also that he had not quite forgotten the 
traditional French claims to the two Sicilies and 
Milan, yet as it was not likely that the Italian powers 
would help to overthrow the domination of Spain 
simply to place themselves under that of France, 
he was probably prepared to forego all territorial 
aggrandisement beyond the Alps. 

Henry IV. had fully made up his mind that when 
he was prepared for war and an opportunity offered 
he would attack Spain and Austria, but the time and 
manner of the attack were to be determined by cir- 
cumstances. 

The death of Queen Elizabeth (1603) was most 



414 Henry of Navarre. [1599- 

sincerely mourned by her old ally. '' She was," he 
said, *' my second self, the irreconcilable enemy of 
our enemies." "^ Sully was at once sent to persuade 
her successor to embark on an anti-Spanish policy, 
and to conclude a yet closer alliance with France. 
James I. was at first eager for peace with Spain 
and spoke of the Dutch as rebels who deserved no 
help. But the discovery of a plot for his assassina- 
tion changed his mood, and he listened to the advice 
of his wiser ministers, especially of Cecil, who, 
though unwilling either to engage England in a 
struggle which might overtax her resources, or to 
assist France to acquire the sovereignty of the 
Netherlands, was averse to any peace which should 
not effectually limit the power of Spain. Olden 
Barneveld also came to England to plead in person 
the cause of his countrymen, and impressed the 
British Solomon by the vigour of his genius and the 
cogency of his arguments. James listened com- 
placently to proposals for a double marriage between 
the Dauphin and his only daughter, the Lady Eliza- 
beth, and between Prince Henry and Elizabeth of 
France. In the treaty which was finally signed 
there was no mention of these betrothals, but the 
English King promised to allow soldiers to be levied 
in England and Scotland for the defence of Ostend 
besieged by the Spaniards, while Henry IV. engaged 

* The expression occurs in a letter given by Sully in the Economies 
Royales, of doubtful authenticity, since it purports to have been written 
by the King on the day before that on which we know that he heard 
of Elizabeth's death, and bears other traces of Sully's workshop for 
manufacturing documents. But Henry says very much the same 
thing in a letter written to his ambassador in England shortly after. 



16091 Spanish Intrigues. 



to defray the expenses of this force, a third part of 
what he spent being deducted from the debt he 
owed to the English Government. Accordingly a 
reinforcement of 6,ooo men joined the contingent, 
which, under Sir Francis Vere, was assisting Maurice 
to resist Spinola. 

In Germany, French diplomacy was active, en- 
deavouring to unite the Protestant princes divided 
by dynastic quarrels and theological hatred, and to 
prepare the way for the elevation of a non-Austrian 
prince to the Imperial throne. In order to distract 
the attention of the Hapsburgs, Henry IV. en- 
deavoured to prevent the conclusion of peace in 
1602 between Turkey and the Emperor. In 1603 
the French ambassador urged the new Sultan, 
Achmet, an energetic and ambitious prince, to con- 
clude peace with Persia and to turn his arms against 
Hungary. The capture of Pesth by the Moslem 
was thus to some extent the consequence of the 
diplomacy of the Most Christian King to whom the 
inventor of the " Grand Design " attributes the 
intention of turning the Turk bag and baggage out 
of Europe. 

French agents also sought to turn the sufferings 
of the Moriscos, the half converted descendants of 
the Spanish Moors, to account, by inciting them to 
defend themselves by arms against their fanatical 
and foolish oppressors. 

But nowhere was Henry's diplomacy more success- 
ful than in Italy. He remained on good terms with 
the Pope and influential at Rome, while refusing to 
permit the promulgation in France of the decrees of 



41 6 Henry of Navarre. [1599- 

the Council of Trent, and maintaining his right to 
appoint to vacant bishoprics and benefices, and that 
of his parliaments to receive appeals from the 
ecclesiastical courts and even to deprive bishops of 
their sees, an abomination in the eyes of the High 
Church and Ultramontane party. 

On the death of Clement VIII. (March, 1605) 
French influence and gold brought about the election 
of the Cardinal Alexander de' Medici (Leo XL), and 
on his death within less than a month after his 
elevation, of the Cardinal Camillo Borghese (Paul 
v.), a prelate who, at any rate, was no friend of 
Spain. 

But nothing did more to raise the French King's 
reputation and influence in Italy than his successful 
mediation in a quarrel concerning ecclesiastical im- 
munities between the Pope and Venice (1606). 
Spain hoped as the champion of the Church to 
obtain a pretext for attacking and humbling the 
Republic, which had been the persevering and 
dangerous, though cautious opponent of her Italian 
policy. Henry IV., on the other hand, owed a debt 
of gratitude to Venice, which had been the first 
Roman Catholic power publicly to acknowledge his 
title, and he more than repaid that debt by enabling 
the Senate to conclude an arrangement with the 
Holy See by which Paul V. virtually surrendered 
all disputed points, and thereby abandoned that 
claim of the spiritual power to pre-eminence over the 
temporal, which Rome had struggled during so many 
centuries to establish. But the Italians were less 
impressed by a concession, which marks an epoch 



1609] Spanish Intrigues, 417 

in the history of the Church, than by the vic- 
tory won by French over Spanish diplomacy. The 
Duke of Savoy, who had gained nothing from his 
connection with Spain, abandoned the dream of a 
Burgundian kingdom extending to the Rhone, and 
hoped by allying himself with France to obtain 
Lombardy or some equivalent accession of territory 
at the expense of his former allies. 

But the French King was not always the aggressor 
in the contest of intrigue, nor was the advantage 
always on his side. Just as the Spanish army was 
still the army of Pedro Navarro and of Gonsalvo of 
Cordova, of Alva, and Farnese, still the most perfect 
instrument of warfare in Europe, surpassing other 
troops in organisation, professional pride and dis- 
cipline, so Spanish diplomacy still displayed the 
Machiavellian arts, the restless activity it had learnt 
when directed by the untiring vigilance of the recluse 
of the Escurial. Scarcely a day passed but Henry 
was reminded that Spain retained both the power 
and the will to do him an injury. 

Soon after Biron's conspiracy it was discovered 
that the secretary of Villeroy was in the pay of 
the Spaniards and communicated to them all the 
secrets of the French foreign office. The Count of 
Auvergne, who had cunningly secured an oppor- 
tunity to continue his treasonable correspondence 
by affecting a wish to make his relations with the 
Court of Madrid the means of obtaining information 
for the French Government, disclosed only what was 
unimportant or untrue and persisted in conspiring 

against his King and country. 
27 



Henry of Navarre. tl599- 



\ 



The domestic life of Henry IV. was very much 
what his extraordinary disregard of decency and 
dignity deserved, and it was never more stormy and 
uncomfortable than about this time (1604). He was 
tormented by the reproaches and by the mutual abuse 
of his wife and mistress. Mary of Medici complained 
that Madame de Verneuil dared to insinuate that she 
was the King's true wife, her son the legitimate 
heir. If the King were to die, she, his widow, and 
the Dauphin would be exposed to great danger. 
The domestic and foreign enemies of the Govern- 
ment would be eager to support the claim of Hen- 
riette's boy as a pretext for troubling the kingdom. 
Henriette, on the other hand, maintained that, even 
during her lover's life, she had reason to dread the 
jealous hostility of the Florentine ; while if anything 
were to happen to Henry, who could protect her and 
her poor orphans against' the Queen Regent? The 
least the King could do was to give her some strong 
castles and towns in which they might seek a 
refuge. As he refused to entertain such a proposal, 
she spoke in such terms of his wife and so tauntingly 
to her lover, that he was nearly provoked into boxing 
her ears. But so great was her power over him, so 
delightful and amusing her society, so alluring, as it 
would seem, even her devilry and rrialice, that on the 
next day he would again be at her feet and lament- 
ing her coldness. For she scarcely deigned to con- 
ceal her indifference ; were he not a King, she used 
to say, no one would tolerate him as a lover, and he 
had good reason to believe, that there were others 
whom she regarded with more favour. 



i609] Spanish Intrigues. - 4 1 9 

In the middle of June (1604) the EngHsh ambas- 
sador handed to the King a letter, in which James 
I. advised him to seize the person and papers of one 
Morgan, a Spanish spy and agent, then in Paris. It 
appeared from documents in Morgan's possession 
that the Count of Auvergne and the Entragues were 
seeking not only to secure the support of Spain for 
Henriette and her children in the event of the King's 
death, but also intended to attempt some treason 
during his lifetime. 

Auvergne was in his county ; the King sent for 
Entragues, but he and his daughter stoutly denied 
that there had been more than vague talk between 
them and the Spanish ambassador as to whether the 
King of Spain would promise Henriette a refuge in 
his dominions. Entragues was not immediately ar- 
rested, and hurried to his Castle of Marcoussis, where 
three moats and drawbridges always raised would 
secure him against a surprise. He was therefore not 
a little astonished when early one morning his cur- 
tains were drawn by a royal officer and he saw his 
room filled with archers of the Guard ; four of whom 
had passed the triple moats and bridges, in the dress 
of country women bringing butter and eggs for their 
lord's breakfast, overpowered the sentinels and ad- 
mitted their comrades. 

Entragues was carried off to the Bastille, and with 
him a voluminous correspondence between the con- 
spirators and the Spanish Court, containing pro- 
posals for the assassination of the King and a promise 
signed by Philip III. to recognise the son of Madame 
de Verneuil as heir to the French throne on the 



420 . Henry of Navarre. [1599- 

decease of Henry IV. The only thing wanting was 
the celebrated promise of marriage. On a hint that 
he might thus buy his pardon, Entragues told where 
it might be found hidden in a hole in the wall. The 
prisoner signed a declaration that this was the au- 
thentic promise, and that no other to the same effect 
existed. There had been a popular rumour of one 
written by the King with his blood, which Henriette 
was said to keep in her own possession. 

In the meantime Auvergne had been arrested. 
Madame de Verneuil also was placed in confinement. 
The culprits were brought to trial before the Parlia- 
ment. Entragues and Auvergne were convicted of 
high treason and sentenced to death. Henriette was 
remanded until further evidence could be procured. 
The lives of her father, an inveterate and unscrupu- 
lous intriguer, and of her half-brother, who, under a 
not unpleasing exterior and a dignified grace of man- 
ner, such as few of his father's house were wholly 
unable to assume, had the soul of a swindling lac- 
quey, were justly forfeited. The King's advisers 
were urgent that the law should be allowed to take its 
course. The execution of a King's son for treason, 
and for conspiring with foreign powers would have 
been an even more useful warning to high-born 
traitors than the death of Marshal Biron. Henry 
had done his best to overcome his passion for Hen- 
riette d'Entragues. At first he turned for assistance 
and sympathy to his wife. But, he complained to 
Sully, she received his advances coldly and, when 
he would have caressed her, assumed a repellent 
air. There was nothinq; about her which could make 



1609] Conspiracies of the Entr agues. 421 

it easy to forget the graceful vivacity, the nimble 
wit of his perfidious mistress. But perhaps fire might 
drive out fire. The Princess of Conde had about 
her a young relation Jacquehne de Beuil, conspicuous 
among the beauties of the Court for her golden hair 
and brilliant complexion, her infantile yet voluptuous 
grace. The King determined to make her his mis- 
tress. Perhaps he hoped to find in her more placid 
nature some of the repose he had lost with his 
Gabrielle, The Princess of Cond^ did not properly 
appreciate the advancement in store for her cousin, 
but the King gave her very roughly to understand 
that she, at any rate, was not the person to affect 
scruples of honour. The young lady herself regarded 
the matter more simply as a business transaction. 
She bargained for a title, an estate, a pension, a large 
sum of ready money and a husband. 

The King was in no hurry to discard a toy so 
costly as the new mistress, yet he did not find that 
she enabled him to forget the old. The corrupt 
perversity, the fiery temper, the biting tongue of 
Madame de Verneuil were more stimulating to his 
jaded taste, than the cloying sweetness of a more 
beautiful but soulless courtesan. He felt that he 
must have his Henriette back, and all the more be- 
cause she affected to scorn him and would not sue 
for mercy. But if he cut off the father's head, even 
he, dead as he was to all sense of seemliness, felt 
that he could scarcely again be the daughter's 
lover. Entrague's life, therefore, must be spared. 
The Count of Auvergne, he argued, was too weak in 
character, too blasted in reputation to be dangerous, 



42 2 Henry of Navarre, [1599- 



and it might seem unworthy of his magnanimity to 
send the last scion of the House of Valois to the 
scaffold. Instead, therefore, of being led out to 
execution, the Count was locked up in the Bastille, 
while Entragues and his daughter were released. 

Early in the new year (1605) the King was again 
in amorous correspondence with Henriette, begging 
her to love, him, to whom all the rest of the world 
compared with her was as nothing. Mile, de Beuil, 
now Countess of Moret, was indeed retained, as a 
refuge when the mistress was spiteful and the wife 
sulky. Before long the resources of the royal harem 
were further extended by the addition of a third 
publicly acknowledged mistress. Mary of Medici 
appeared to resent her husband's infidelities less 
violently, now, when she shared his affections with 
many, than when she dreaded the dangerous in- 
fluence of Henriette d'Entragues alone. The irreg- 
ularity of the King's conduct was perhaps the less 
displeasing to her, because it compelled him to buy 
her complaisance by shutting his eyes to the scan- 
dalous favour and unbounded influence of Concini 
and his wife, Leonora. 

Shortly after the conspiracy of the Entragues, 
discovery was made of a plot to betray Marseilles, 
Beziers and other towns in the South to the Span- 
iards. In the North they were again treating with 
Bouillon, who was disappointed by the refusal of 
the Huguenot Assembly which met in 1605 at 
Chatelleraut, to countenance his opposition to the 
King. Henry at length lost patience with this 
troublesome intriguer. He advanced upon Sedan 



1609] Conspiracies of the Entr agues. 423 

with a small army and a powerful battering train. 
When the Duke saw that neither Protestants nor 
Spaniards would stir a finger to help him, he capitu- 
lated. The terms he obtained were favourable in 
the extreme. No punishment was inflicted on him 
except the occupation of Sedan during four years 
by a royal garrison under a Huguenot commander. 
The leniency of the King is perhaps to be excused 
by his desire to conciliate the Protestants and the 
neighbouring German princes, who interceded for 
Bouillon, yet that ruler bears the sword in vain who 
encourages by impunity plots dangerous to the 
security of his country and to the lives of his 
subjects. 

On September 20, 1604, Ostend, a mere heap of 
ruins, capitulated after a siege of three years. In 
the next campaigns nothing that military genius 
could effect against an adversary scarcely less able 
was left undone by Spinola. He freely spent the 
greater part of his vast wealth, 14,000,000 gold 
crowns, in the service he had entered as a volunteer, 
yet, although he won some battles and took some 
fortresses, no real progress was made towards the 
conquest of the revolted provinces, while every part 
of the Spanish Empire was suffering from the per- 
sistent and successful maritime war waged by the 
Dutch. The state of the Spanish Netherlands was 
deplorable. On the northern frontier the land was 
desolate for miles ; grass grew in the streets of 
Ghent and Bruges, the quays of Antwerp were 
deserted. Nor were the Dutch unwilling to treat. 
The load of taxation borne by the country was very 



424 Henry of Navarre, [1599- 

heavy, and if the prosperity of the traders and of 
the maritime population increased, the sufferings of 
the agricultural population were great. Moreover, 
a powerful party desired peace, because they were 
jealous of the almost regal authority of Prince 
Maurice, to which, while the war lasted, they must 
needs submit. 

Some overtures were made by Archduke Albert 
as early as 1603, but it was not till four years later 
that negotiations for peace were opened in regular 
form. After the great preliminary difficulty, the 
recognition of the United Provinces as free and 
sovereign States had been overcome, and a truce for 
eight months concluded, it was very unlikely that 
hostilities would again be resumed. Henry IV. 
would have preferred the war to drag on till the 
time was ripe for him to avenge himself and Europe 
on the House of Austria. But if the Dutch would 
not continue the struggle without more help than it 
was convenient for him to give, then the best he 
could do was to secure their gratitude by taking an 
active and friendly part in the negotiations, and by 
protecting them against any treachery or double 
dealing intended by the common enemy. He 
accordingly sent President Jeannin to attend the 
Conference at the Hague as his representative, and 
concluded a defensive alliance with the United 
Provinces, which was to come into force immediately 
after the conclusion of peace (January, 1608). 

The Nuncio and some of the Jesuits about the 
French Court assured the Spanish Government, that 
Henry IV. might be induced not only to abandon 



16091 Conspiracies of the Entr agues, 425 

the Dutch but even to turn his arms against them, 
if his daughter were betrothed to the second son of 
Phihp III. and the sovereignty of a re-united and 
CathoHc Netherlands secured to them after the death 
of Archduke Albert. Encouraged by the Pope, 
Philip III. sent Don Pedro of Toledo, a grandee of 
the highest rank and a cousin of Mary of Medici, as 
his ambassador to Paris, to propose a close alliance 
between the two Courts, cemented by a double mar- 
riage between the royal children. Such an arrange- 
ment would have been as acceptable to the Catholic 
party, the former Leaguers, in the Council, as to the 
Queen. They saw that the nearer the time drew 
for the accomplishment of the King's anti-Spanish 
designs the more he inclined to the Protestants. 
Old Huguenots like Aubigne, began to be seen 
about the Court ; and it was felt that when once 
Henry, as the head of a Protestant coalition, had 
drawn the sword against the dynasty, whose cause 
was identified with that of Romanism, he must, of 
necessity, be led farther in the same direction. The 
situation, was not unlike that before the massacre of 
Bartholomew, when the adoption by Charles IX. of 
the policy of Coligny, the declaration of war against 
Spain, would have been followed by the triumph of 
the Protestants and of their friends in the royal 
council. 

But Henry IV. could not be tempted, by a bait 
more glittering than substantial, to change the whole 
of his policy : to abandon his cherished hope of so 
humbling the Hapsburgs that their ambition should 
never again be dangerous to France or Europe. He 



426 Henry of Navarre. [1599- 

was asked forthwith to abandon and attack his alHes, 
but the price of his dishonour was future and con- 
tingent. When Don Pedro at his first audience said 
that his master would gladly negotiate on the basis 
of the proposals made to him for a double marriage, 
Henry indignantly interrupted him. " What pro- 
posals?" he had made none himself and would 
sooner lose his hand than be false to his allies ! 

It was in vain that the Castilian bent his pride to 
flattery. Taking the King's sword from a page he 
kissed it, saying that he now was a happy man, since 
he had held in his hands the sword of the bravest 
Kino; in the world : threats availed even less. When 
Don Pedro exclaimed, in the heat of dispute, that 
the King, by helping the Dutch, might provoke 
Philip III. to assist French malcontents, Henry 
burst forth : ^' Let your master have a care, I should 
be in the saddle before his foot touched the 
stirrup." 

Don Pedro remained eight months in France 
courted by the Queen and doing his best to fan 
once more the old embers of the League into a 
blaze. Again the drum ecclesiastic was beaten in 
the Parisian pulpits and again the piety of the mob 
made the streets unsafe to the Huguenots. Again 
the Guises began to cabal and to complain of the 
harshness with which the King exacted the price of 
Mercoeur's pardon, the hand of his daughter for 
the Duke of Vendome. Nothing availed to force 
the Spanish alliance on Henry, or to save Spain 
from the humiliation of recognising the indepen- 
dence of the little country which for forty years had 



16091 Conspiracies of the Enti^agucs. 427 

successfully defied the efforts of the greatest and 
wealthiest empire the world had seen since the first 
barbarian hordes crossed the Roman frontiers. 
Owing in great measure to the skilful diplomacy of 
Jeannin, supported by the English envoys, a treaty 
was signed (April 9, 1609) between Philip III. and 
the Dutch, which recognised the independence of 
the United Provinces and secured to them the right 
of trading to all parts of the Indies not actually 
occupied by the Spaniards. It was an empty con- 
cession to Spanish pride that the treaty took the 
form of a twelve year's truce and not of a perpetual 
peace. 






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CHAPTER XL 

COMPLICATIONS IN GERMANY — PREPARATIONS F^OR 
WAR— ASSASSINATION OF THE KING. 

1609-1610. 

;VEN before peace had been concluded 
at The Hague it had become clear 
that the outbreak of hostilities in 
Germany could not be long delayed. 
The Peace of Augsburg (1555) had 
been nothing more than a temporary 
acquiescence on the part of both sides in the status 
quo, a truce which could not be lasting. The 
struggle had been too equal. Both sides were 
irritated, neither convinced that in a second trial of 
strength they might not be able to overwhelm their 
opponents. Hardly any circumstance likely to pro- 
voke and embitter the conflict was wanting. There 
were dynastic jealousies and feuds, a universal sense 
of uneasiness and insecurity, theological odium. On 
both sides the confident assurance of foreign support ; 
on both violations or evasions of the terms of a com- 
promise purposely ambiguous, and pregnant with 

428 



Complications in Germany. 429 



disputes more dangerous than those which it was 
supposed to settle. 

The Protestants, who, during the tolerant reign of 
Maximilian II. had appeared likely to become as 
predominant in Hungary and Bohemia and southern 
Germany as in the north, were alarmed by the rapid 
progress of the Counter Reformation. The Jesuits 
— Viscera magnarum domuum dominique futuri — were 
all powerful in the Courts of Vienna and Munich. In 
the Austrian and Bavarian dominions, in most of the 
ecclesiastical principalities of southern and in many 
of those of northwestern Germany the Lutherans 
were obliged either to submit to persecution or to 
conceal their dissent. The Imperial law courts, the 
only remaining centre of national unity, became 
violently orthodox and partial. 

The threatening attitude of the Emperor Rudolph 
convinced the Protestant Princes that it was abso- 
lutely necessary that they should unite for their 
common defence. In 1601 a first defensive alliance 
was concluded between the Elector Palatine, the 
Elector of Brandenburg, the Landgrave of Hesse 
and some others. 

In 1605 the Protestants of Hungary and Transyl- 
vania allied themselves with the Turks against their 
persecuting sovereign. The revolt spread into the 
hereditary dominions of the Hapsburgs. Compelled 
by necessity and by the unanimous wish of his 
family, the Emperor, whose character was an 
unhappy mixture of obstinacy and weakness, of 
unbridled sensuality, degrading superstition and 
despondent apathy, allowed his far more able and 



430 Henry of Navarre. [1609- 

tolerant brother Matthias to exercise a temporary 
dictatorship and to save his empire by well-timed 
concessions. It was agreed that Matthias should be 
elected King of the Romans. But the Ultramon- 
tanes induced the Archduke Ferdinand, a man of 
great ambition and a zealous Catholic, to come for- 
ward as a rival candidate to his cousin. Rudolph 
also refused to perform the engagements entered into 
in his name by Matthias, who thereupon with an 
Austrian, Hungarian and Moravian army, marched 
upon Prague where the Emperor was and extorted 
the cession of half of his dominions and a promise 
of the reversion of the remainder. Since Matthias 
owed his success to the support of the Protestants, 
he was compelled to grant them toleration in the 
countries of which he became the ruler (summer of 
1608). 

At the diet held in the beginning of 1608, the 
Protestants demanded the reform of the Imperial 
courts, and an explicit renewal of the Religious 
Peace to be promulgated in a more comprehensive 
form ; and when their demands were rejected they 
left the diet in a body. 

After so open a schism the outbreak of war sooner 
or later was certain, and a new and larger Union of 
Protestant Princes was at once formed. The lead- 
ing spirit of this confederation was Prince Christian 
of Anhalt, a former officer and friend of Henry IV. 
Saxony stood aloof, but all the other Protestant 
Princes and many of the Free Cities joined the Union. 

The domestic dissensions of the Hapsburgs ; the 
imbecility of the Emperor, who was sinking into a 



1610] Complications in Germany. 431 

state of furious melancholy ; the Protestant reaction 
in the Austrian provinces and Hungary ; the alliance 
of the Protestant States of the Empire, were circum- 
stances which could not but suggest to Henry IV. 
that the time had come when a fatal blow might be 
struck at the Austro-Spanish power. In the next 
year (March 25, 1609) an event happened certain to 
precipitate the struggle for which both sides were 
now more or less prepared. John William, Duke of 
Cleves, Juliers and Berg, died childless. The Elector 
of Brandenburg and the Count Palatine of Neuburg 
were the nearest heirs, claiming through the two 
eldest sisters of the late Duke. But the Emperor 
maintained that the Duchies were male fiefs, which 
could only descend in the direct male line, while the 
Saxon princes appealed to old instruments, con- 
firmed by the Imperial courts, which secured to 
them the reversion of the possessions of the House 
of Cleves. 

The question of the succession to the dominions 
of the Duke of Cleves was one of vital importance. 
Lying as they did along the lower Rhine and close 
to Belgium and Holland, in the hands of a Catholic 
like the late Duke, they connected the bishoprics 
of Munster, Paderborn and Hildesheim with the 
ecclesiastical electorates and the Spanish Nether- 
lands thus interrupting the communications of the 
Protestants of Central Germany with the Dutch. 
That they should pass into the hands of a Protestant 
would be a fatal blow to the Catholics of northern 
Germany and would threaten the security of the 
Spanish Netherlands. 



43 2 Henry of Navarre. [1609- 

Aware of the advantages of possession, the 
Elector of Brandenburg and the Count Palatine of 
Neuburg had at once endeavoured to occupy the 
Duchies. They would have come to blows in the 
process, had not the Landgrave of Hesse persuaded 
them to govern the country jointly until their claims 
could be submitted to arbitration or otherwise de- 
cided. The Emperor cited the claimants to appear 
before his Court, and, since the " Possessioners," as 
they were called, paid no attention to the summons, 
he put them under the ban of the Empire and 
ordered the Archduke Leopold to take possession of 
the territory as Imperial Commissioner. 

On the very day on which Henry IV. heard of the 
death of the Duke of Cleves, he wrote to Jeannin, 
then at The Hague, that the Emperor would without 
doubt try to seize the fortresses of the Duchies and 
to possess himself of at least the better part of the 
territory, but that he was determined not to allow 
any such addition to the power of the House of 
Austria; and that if war came he would wage it in 
no half-hearted fashion. Jeannin in reply told him 
that Barneveld, the leader of the peace-party in the 
United Provinces, had assured him that if the King 
of France took up the cause of the Elector of 
Brandenburg, the claimant whose title appeared 
strongest, the Dutch would stand by him against no 
matter whom. Neither France nor Holland could 
permit Spain and Austria to establish themselves 
at their gates in a position which commanded the 
Rhine. 

Archduke Albert desirous of peace, and well aware 



16101 Complications in GevTnany, 433 

that Henry IV. and his allies, if victorious, were 
likely to seek an indemnity at his expense, proposed 
that the Germans should be left to fight out their 
own quarrels. He would not interfere, and he would 
also persuade his brother-in-law Philip HI. to remain 
neutral. Henry replied, the Archdukes might please 
themselves, but that whatever happened he was de- 
termined to help his friends. Even the pacific James 
I. announced his intention of joining with France 
and Holland in defence of Protestant Germany 
against Austria and Spain ; but since the conti- 
nental powers were more directly interested than 
England, it was for them to make the first move. 
In Italy, Charles Emmanuel was now the zealous 
ally of France. He had made up his mind that 
the hereditary ambition of his family could not be 
satisfied west of the Alps. As the reward of 
his help in driving the Spaniards out of Italy he 
hoped to receive the Duchy of Milan, and the 
title of a King of Lombardy. It was thought that 
the prospect of annexing Naples to the patrimony 
of St. Peter might induce the Pope to join the 
league against Spain. The island of Sicily was to 
be the price of the active co-operation of Venice. 
Henry had wisely abandoned the idea of any terri- 
torial aggrandisement in Italy, but there was an un- 
derstanding that Charles Emmanuel, if he received 
Lombardy, should cede Savoy and Nice to France. 
The King was very far from intending to go to war 
for an idea, as some of the panegyrists of his disin- 
terested policy would have us believe, or if for an idea, 
it was for that idea of nationality which has since 



434 Henry of Navarre, [1609- 

his time so often provided a useful excuse for dynas- 
tic ambition. '' I am well content," he said, " that 
every place where Spanish is spoken should belong to 
Spain, where German is spoken to Germany. But 
every land where the French tongue is used, ought 
to be mine." No doubt he hoped ultimately to 
overcome the objections of England to the annexa- 
tion of the Walloon Provinces, and of the Swiss to 
that of Franche Comte, and to secure the possession 
of Lorraine by the projected marriage of the 
Dauphin to the daughter and heiress of the Duke. 

Meantime (August, 1609), by the connivance of 
the commander of the garrison. Archduke Leopold 
had obtained possession of the strongly fortified 
town of Juliers, and began to carry on desultory 
hostilities with the Possessioners. But with a few 
troops supplied by the Ecclesiastical Electors and 
some other Catholic Princes he could effect little. 
The Austrian Princes were engrossed by their family 
dissensions, and the Spaniards were fully occupied 
by the expulsions of the Moriscos, the most costly 
and suicidal act of bigotry and folly ever perpetrated 
even by that fanatical and shortsighted Government. 
There was therefore abundant time for Henry to 
complete his negotiations and preparations before 
he began the war. 

It had been arranged that a congress of the Princes 
of the Protestant Union to be attended by the en- 
voys of France should meet at Hall in Swabia at the 
beginning of the next year (January, 1610). Until 
then nothing was decided. Many about the King 
were averse to Avar and in favour of a compromise. 



1610] Complications in Germany. 435 

some because war increased the influence of their 
rivals, others because they beheved that under ex- 
isting circumstances the King of Spain and the 
Emperor would be found ready to grant everything 
that could reasonably be demanded. 

Spanish influence was in the ascendant at the 
Court of Florence, and the Tuscan ambassador con- 
firmed Mary of Medici in her opposition to her 
husband's policy. Nor were his allies as forward as 
he had hoped. Venice displayed her usual caution. 
The Pope could hardly fail to see that the success 
of Henry IV. would mean a check to the future pro- 
gress of orthodoxy, possibly the total ruin of the 
German church. In short the only certain allies of 
France in Italy were Savoy and Mantua. James I., 
the Dutch and the German Princes were unwilling 
to do more than defend the rights of the Posses- 
sioners. It was therefore believed that a peaceable 
solution was not impossible when an event occurred 
which has been said to have determined Henry to 
draw the sword. 

It has pleased those writers who are attracted by 
the romantic in history or who love to deduce great 
events from the trivial accidents of our physical ex- 
istence, to expatiate at length on the story of Henry 
IV's unseemly passion for Charlotte de Montmo- 
rency, and although it may not have materially 
affected the course of events, we cannot well pass it 
by in silence. It discredited the King's policy by 
enabling his enemies to represent it as swayed by 
personal and unworthy motives, and it affords an 
impressive warning that if we indulge our pleasant 



43^ Henry of Navarre. [1609- 

vices we may become their unhappy and degraded 
slaves 

As Henry grew older, the private history of his 
life became neither more edifying nor less eventful. 
Henriette d'Entragues, notwithstanding her infideli- 
ties, her treasonable intrigues, her bitter tongue,— 
she spoke to the King, it was said, not as to an equal, 
but as to her footman, — and her scarcely concealed 
aversion, continued the reigning favourite. The 
Duke of Guise and the Prince of Joinville were 
among her admirers and she was not without hopes 
of terminating a distasteful connection by a splendid 
marriage. There are few things more pitiable than 
the letters in which the King by mingling threats 
and cajolery seeks to overcome the coldness of his 
mistress. Nor were his relations with the other 
ladies who shared his favour more dignified. Not 
one of them seems to have felt any real affection for 
him. They laughed at him behind his back with 
the young courtiers and nobles who were his fortu- 
nate rivals. He complained that his married life was 
a hell upon earth ; that his wife was entirely ruled 
by Concini and Leonora, who in everything incited 
her to oppose his wishes. But conscious of his own 
shortcomings he did not dare to insist that the mis- 
chievous couple should be sent back to Italy. 

In one respect only, Mary de' Medici fulfilled his 
expectations. In nine years she bore him six chil- 
dren. There was no longer any danger that a direct 
heir to the Crown would not be forthcoming. Henry 
IV. playing with his children is a familiar figure in 
popular history, and no doubt he was in his way an 



1610] Complications in Germany. 437 

affectionate father. But there was a marvellous ab- 
sence of decorum and discipline in the royal nursery 
at St. Germains, where his legitimate and illegitimate 
offspring were brought up under the supervision of 
a Mme. de Monglat, a respectable but not overwise 
woman. 

One afternoon towards the beginning of 1609, the 
King passing through a gallery of the Louvre found 
a bevy of young ladies practising for a ballet, nymphs 
of Diana armed for the chase. As he came by, one 
of these, a girl of fifteen, raised her javelin as if in 
act to strike. Such was her grace, her beauty and 
the magic of her eyes that Henry seemed to himself 
to be pierced to the heart and about to faint. 

The nymph was Charlotte de Montmorency, one 
of the two children born to the Constable by his 
second wife, a woman of middling birth, who, it was 
whispered, owed to some supernatural agency her 
wondrous loveHness and the splendid marriage it 
enabled her to make. She died young, some said 
the demon had been an impatient creditor, leaving 
two children the inheritors of her charms, Charlotte, 
and a boy whose death on the scaffold was to be the 
most impressive object lesson given to the French 
nobility before' the Revolution. 

Mile, de Montmorency was betrothed, with the 
King's approval, to Francis de Bassompierre, ayoung 
noble of Lorraine whose graces and good looks had 
acquired the King's favour, and who, though barely 
twenty, was the gayest gallant and most accom- 
plished lady-killer of the Court. 

Shortly after this passing encounter the King was 



438 Henry of Navarre. [1609- 

laid up by an attack of gout. By day he meditated 
on the incomparable charms of Charlotte de Mont- 
morency, who more than once accompanied her 
aunt, the Duchess of Angouleme, on a visit to his 
sick room. By night his attendants endeavoured to 
soothe his pain by reading aloud the romances which 
were then thrilling the polite world. The intermina- 
ble rhapsodies of the lovesick shepherds and shep- 
herdesses, the quintessential sentiment, the Platonic 
gallantries of the Astree, weigh like the drowsiest of 
opiates on the eyelids of the few who now open 
the dusty volumes of M. d'Urfe. But they pro- 
foundly stirred the fancy of the King. Perhaps just 
because there could be no greater contrast than that 
between his own life of active adventure, varied by 
realistic amours, and the ideal world of vaporous 
sentiment and alembicated passion to which he was 
introduced. Thus two centuries later the Corsican 
ogre sympathised with the sorrows of Werther and 
the perplexities of Pamela. 

As the paroxysm of his gout abated Henry felt 
that a new and delightful sensation might be found 
in a pure and romantic, but not unrequited passion 
for the girlish bride of his favourite. Bassompierre 
was summoned, and as he knelt by the royal bed- 
side listened with surprised dismay to the communi- 
cation made to him. His master confessed that he 
was desperately in love with the Constable's daugh- 
ter and therefore asked him to give up the projected 
marriap-e. If the fair Charlotte became Bassom- 
pierre's wife and loved him, he, the King, would hate 
the happy husband ; if she loved the King, her hus- 



1610] Complications in Germany. 439 

band would hate the King. In either case there 
would be enmity between them. Henry said he in- 
tended to marry her to the Prince of Conde, who 
scarcely cared for anything but hunting, and for 
nothing less than ladies' society. He would keep 
her about the Court and find in a tender and mutual, 
but pure, attachment the delight and solace of that 
old age which he felt to be creeping on him. Bas- 
sompierre informs us in his memoirs that his love 
was as warm as the chilling prospect of marriage 
would allow, and the connection with the Mont- 
morencys was too flattering and advantageous to be 
foregone without regret. But he saw at once that 
the King was determined, that unless he yielded 
with a good grace he w^ould lose both his bride and 
the royal favour. In short the lover sighed, but the 
courtier obeyed, and had his reward in the enibraces 
and flattering promises of the King. But on this 
occasion at least we heartily sympathise with Char- 
lotte, who when informed of the change that had 
been made in the disposition of her hand, passed by 
her too facile lover with a shrug and a glance that 
sent him in grief and mortification to his room 
where, he assures us, he spent three days without 
food or sleep. 

The plan arranged by the King was far from an- 
swering his expectations. Conde, it is true, grate- 
fully accepted the King's pension and appeared to 
be far more interested in his wife's dowry than in 
her person. But when he clearly understood the 
part it was intended that he should play, when he saw 
the King who was usually plain in dress and pain- 



440 Henry of Navarre. [I609- 



fully neglectful of his person, powdered and scented 
and vying in silks and satins with his courtiers, when 
he found that his wife was not only receiving but 
replying to the passionate elegies and sonnets com- 
posed for their master's use by Malherbe and other 
rhymesters of the Court, then, in the King's phrase 
he began '' to play the devil," and after some angry 
scenes in which Henry entirely lost all sense of dig- 
nity and decorum, as well as his temper, carried off 
the Princess to a castle not far from the Flemish 
frontier. The King followed his mistress, and 
dressed as one of his own huntsmen stood with a 
patch over his eye by the roadside to see her pass. 
He penetrated in the same disguise into the court- 
yard of a house where she was dining and when she 
appeared at a window kissed one hand to her, while 
he pressed the other to his heart. The extravagance 
of such behaviour must have delighted the malice 
of his enemies, but we almost forget it in our disgust 
at the baseness of the dowager Princess of Conde, 
and of the Constable, Duke of Montmorency, who 
were willing to gain the royal favour at the price of 
their daughter's honour. 

At length (30th November, 1609) Conde finding 
himself betrayed by those who had most reason to 
be true to him, fled hastily with his wife across the 
frontier, apparently intending, as he professed, to 
place her in the care of his sister, the Princess of 
Orange at Breda. When Henry heard of his cousin's 
flight his dismay and confusion were extreme. He 
at once summoned his most trusted advisers, the 
Chancellor (Brulart de Sillery), Villeroy, Jeannin. 



1610] Complications in Germany. 441 

One had proposed this, another that, when Sully 
reached the scene of the discussion, the bedroom of 
Mary de' Medici, whose last child, the ill-starred 
Henrietta Maria, had been born a few days previ- 
ously. As soon as the King saw Sully he w^ent up 
to him : '' M. de Sully, the Prince is gone and has 
taken his wife with him." — "Well, Sire, if you had 
followed my advice and locked him up in the Bas- 
tille, you would know where to find him." — '* The 
thing is done ; it is no use talking like that. The 
question is, what am I to do now?" — *' Let me go 
back to the Arsenal, sup and sleep upon it, and then 
I shall perhaps have some good advice to give you." — 
'* No, no, I want it at once." Upon this the Duke 
turned away, and after drumming some time on the 
window turned round and came towards the King. 
"Well, have you thought of something?" — "Yes." 
— " What then ought we to do ? " — " Nothing." 
"What, nothing?" — "Yes, nothing. If you do 
nothing at all and appear quite indifferent, no one 
will think anything of the Prince, or help him, and 
in three months he will be reduced to sue for terms. 
But if you show your anxiety and your eagerness to 
get him back, he will be thought much of, and 
assisted with money. Many will be ready to sup- 
port him to spite you, -v^o, if you disregard him, 
will take no notice of him." 

Sully's good advice did not suit the excited mood 
of the King. Messengers were despatched in every 
direction to intercept the Prince if possible, and as 
there was no doubt that he must at least pass 
through the Netherlands, a special envoy was sent 



442 Henry of Navarre. [i609- 



.denouncing him as a traitor and enemy to the public 
peace and asking the Archdukes to permit his arrest, 
or at least not to grant him a refuge in their domin- 
ions. No incident could have been less to the taste 
of the Infanta and her husband. They were sincerely 
desirous of peace and anxious to give no offence to 
their powerful neighbour, and it must be allowed 
that their conduct in the whole affair was conciliatory 
as well as dignified and honourable. Archduke 
Albert said that Conde had asked his permission to 
travel through his dominions with his wife, in order 
that they might visit their sister the Princess of 
Orange, that he could not violate the safe conduct 
he had given, but that the Prince would not be 
allowed to remain in the country. 

Conde thought it more prudent to send his wife 
on alone to Brussels, where she lived in the palace 
of the Prince of Orange, while he himself hurried to 
Cologne. It was only after Henry had asked the 
Archduke to use his influence to persuade his cousin 
to return to France, that he was permitted to com.e 
to Brussels, where his hosts did their utmost to effect 
a reconciliation between him and the King. Spinola 
and the Spanish ambassador were less nervous about 
offending the King of France, more desirous of re- 
taining such an instrumeift of annoyance against him 
as Conde was likely to prove. For although his 
personal qualities were below mediocrity, he was the 
first Prince of the Blood and next in the succession 
to the King's children, and he bore a name which 
could not but endear him to the Protestants. If 
Henry persisted in his hostile projects against Spain, 



1610] Preparations for War. 443 

Conde might be used to excite troubles in France, 
while in the event of negotiations his extradition 
was a concession which costing little might be dearly 
sold. He was accordingly encouraged to hurry 
secretly to Milan, where he was sumptuously enter- 
tained in the Ducal palace. 

Before leaving Brussels the Prince had seen his 
wife safely lodged under the roof of the Archdukes. 
A plot for her escape concerted before his departure 
between her and the emissaries of her royal lover had 
been betrayed by Henry's inability to conceal his 
joyous anticipations. His disappointment when, 
after leaving Paris with four coaches, he met on the 
road from Flanders (February 15, 1610), not his 
nymph, but a messenger who brought the news of 
failure, was even greater and more open. " I am so 
shrunk with my worries," he wrote to one of his 
agents at Brussels, " that I am nothing but skin and 
bones. Everything disgusts me. I fly society, and 
if out of civility I allow myself to be led into any 
company my wretchedness is completed." 

Although she was treated with extreme kindness 
by the Infanta neither Spanish devotion nor etiquette 
were to the taste of Charlotte de Montmorency. 
Her French attendants were gained by the King 
and enlarged on the triumph and glories of which 
she was deprived by her husband's jealousy. She 
stimulated the impatience and passion of her royal 
lover by her complaints and by the tenderness of 
her replies to his letters. The Constable repeatedly 
wrote, as he was instructed, to the Archdukes, beg- 
ging them to allow his daughter to return to him. 



444 Henry of Navarre. [1609~ 



They replied that they had promised the Prince to 
watch over his wife until he could return to claim 
her, and that they might not with honour break their 
word. They refused to entertain Father Cotton's 
suggestion that they might connive at her escape, — 
a persistence most creditable to them, for Conde had 
not impressed them favourably and they were un- 
feignedly anxious to do nothing which might lead 
to a war with France. Henry IV. and his ministers 
did their utmost to persuade them that peace was 
impossible unless Charlotte de Montmorency was 
given up to her father. " The repose of Europe 
rests in your master's hands," said President Jeannin 
to the ambassador of the Archduke. " Peace and 
war depend on whether the Princess is or is not 
given up. Everything else is immaterial " ; while 
the King reminded him that Troy fell because Priam 
would not send Helen back. 

It would be a dark blot on the fame of Henry of 
Bourbon were it true that he was prepared to begin 
a war which was likely to extend its ravages into 
every part of Europe, not in order that he might 
humble a power which had persistently pursued the 
ruin of France, which had incited her nobles to 
treason, her mobs to revolution, which had placed 
the dagger in the hands of numberless assassins, a 
power whose policy was identified with intolerance 
and persecution ; not in order that he might roll 
back the wave of bigotry and oppression that threat- 
ened to sweep over Germany ; not in order that he 
might consolidate the power of France by uniting 
under his sceptre the whole French-speaking race ; 



1610] Preparations for War. 445 

but only in order that he might gratify a senile and 
adulterous passion. But we are glad to know that 
twelve years of persevering negotiations and care- 
fully prepared alliances prove that this was not so. 
The episode of the Princess of Conde discredited the 
King, disturbed his serenity of mind, distracted his 
judgment at a time when the great enterprise, which 
he was about to take in hand, required that he 
should be in full possession of all the powers of his 
intellect, but it had little influence on the course of 
events. The King and his ministers used the large 
forces assembled for quite a different purpose, as a 
bugbear to frighten the Archdukes. But when they 
refused to purchase security by a compliance incon- 
sistent with their honour, it was not on Brussels that 
the French armies prepared to march. On the con- 
trary, four days before his death (May 10, 1610), the 
King in the most friendly terms asked the Archduke 
Albert's permission to lead his army across his 
territory to the assistance of his German allies ; a 
permission granted by the Archduke, notwithstand- 
ing the opposition of Spinola and of the Spanish 
party in his Council. 

On the 1st April (1610) the Spanish ambassador, 
Don Inigo de Cardenas, demanded an audience of 
the King to inquire into the object of his armaments 
and warlike preparation ; since they were far more 
extensive than was consistent with their avowed 
object, the expulsion of the Archduke Leopold from 
Juliers. If they were directed against the Nether- 
lands, his master considered the interests of his 
sister his own. Henry in reply commended the 



44^ Henry of Navarre. [1609- 



loving care of Philip III. for one so near him in 
blood ; but added that it was a pity the King of 
Spain had so much superfluous charity left to bestow 
on other people's relatives. If such a rebel as Conde 
had fled from Spain into France, he would soon have 
sent him back. Then warming to his theme, he 
complained of the part played by Spain in the con- 
spiracies of Biron, of the Entragues, and whenever 
else there was an opportunity of doing him an in- 
jury. As for the Archdukes, it was true they had at 
first appeared willing to act the part of friendly 
neighbours, but they too had changed their tone in 
obedience to orders received from the Escurial. 
Don Inigo after pointing out in reply that Henry 
had helped the Dutch and shown his ill-will to the 
Spaniards in many other ways, asked categorically 
whether it was against the King his master that so 
powerful an army was assembled. " I arm myself 
and my country," said the King, " to protect myself, 
and I have taken my sword in hand to strike those 
who shall give me cause." — '' What then shall I tell 
my master? " — " Whatever you please." 

Thirty thousand infantry, six thousand cavalry were 
collecting at Chalons and the King had proclaimed 
his intention of himself leading them to the Rhine, 
where, according to a treaty concluded at Hall (Jan- 
uary, 1610), the Princes of the Protestant Union had 
promised to place 10,000 men under his orders. 
The Dutch and the King of England were now, as 
has been noticed, disposed to hang back, but it was 
hoped that the persuasion of Prince Henry of Wales, 
who dreamt of laurels to be gathered under the 



1610] Preparations for War, 447 

auspices of the victor of Coutras and Ivry, and the 
authority of Maurice of Nassau would prevail. Fif- 
teen thousand men under Lesdiguieres were waiting 
in Dauphiny to join the army of the Marshal's old 
opponent, the Duke of Savoy, in the invasion of 
Lombardy, and although the Marquis of Mantua 
was the only other Italian Prince who had promised 
active co-operation, it was expected that certainly 
Venice, and possibly the Pope, would be tempted by 
the prospect of large and easy territorial aggrandise- 
ment to join in the attack on Spain. The avowed 
intention of the French King to procure the election 
of the zealously orthodox Duke of Bavaria as King 
of the Romans, might convince the Holy Father 
that he did not aim at the ruin of the Church either 
in Germany or elsewhere. 

Ten thousand men commanded by the Marquis of 
La Force were expecting orders to cross the Pyre- 
nees and to assist the Moriscos of Aragon and Cata- 
lonia, who were being driven towards the frontier, to 
recover and defend their homes. It was thought 
that the Spanish nobility w^ho loudly protested 
against the persecution of their vassals, would, if 
they did not help, at least not resist the invaders. 
If this diversion did not sufifice to prevent Philip III. 
from sending reinforcements to Italy and assisting 
his Austrian cousins, a larger army under the Duke 
of Montbazon might invade Spain by St. Sebastian 
and the west. 

Henry IV. and his advisers had left little undone 
which might command success against enemies al- 
ready half overthrown by their own errors and divi- 



44^ Henry of Navarre. [1609- 

sions, yet he appeared to have lost his joyous elasticity 
of spirits. He, whose cheerful countenance, whose 
serene and gay intrepidity and hopeful self-reliance 
had inspired his followers with confidence whatever 
the odds they faced, did not himself now share the 
enthusiasm with which his ofificers and soldiers were 
preparing for a campaign in which victory seemed 
easy. Those about him complained that he had 
become morose and irritable, and lamented that he 
should be thus changed by the violence of his pas- 
sion for the Princess of Conde. He himself, as we 
have seen, attributed his melancholy to this cause. 
But he had other and juster reasons for disquiet. 
He was too humane and had too deep a sense of the 
value of peace to begin so great a war with a light 
heart. When he had drawn the sword before, it had 
been in self-defence ; but now he was the aggressor, 
it was he that would have to render an account for 
the bloodshed and misery to come. Besides he had 
too much experience not to know that the most care- 
ful precautions, the most artful combinations avail 
nothing against the insolent caprice of fortune. The 
success of his plans, everything, depended on his life. 
The thrust of a lance, a stray bullet might, at the 
very moment of victory, prove more disastrous to 
the cause than the most ruinous defeat. He had 
dark forebodings that his life might be cut short 
even before he had met the enemy. The conviction 
was very general that Spain would not forego the 
use of her wonted weapon against so dangerous an 
opponent. The murder of the King of France was 
reported in several parts of Europe before it had 



1610] Preparations for War, 449 

actually taken place. The Jesuit preachers and 
others had again begun their incendiary sermons. 
Popular alarm and indignation were excited by the 
usual Hes. The Huguenots had plotted a general 
rising and massacre of the Catholics. The conspiracy 
had been detected, but the King would not allow the 
guilty to be punished. He was himself about to 
attack the Pope and to bring him in chains to Paris, 
to help the German heretics to root out the orthodox 
remnant in the Empire. Why else were all his armies 
commanded by Huguenots, Lesdiguieres, Bouillon, 
La Force, Crequi, Rohan? 

These were the methods, so Henry IV. remarked 
on a previous occasion, by which the day of the bar- 
ricades and the assassination of the late King had 
been brought about, yet he treated such direct in- 
centives to sedition with a leniency which under the 
circumstances was certainly culpable. Meeting one 
day a Jesuit who had preached in his presence with 
the utmost violence against heretics, and their 
scarcely less guilty protectors, who, he protested, 
ought not to be permitted to live, Henry said, '' Well, 
Father, won't you pray to God for us?" — ''How 
can we pray to God for you. Sire, when you are 
going into an heretical country to exterminate the 
handful of Catholics left." Instead of being angry 
the King turned away and laughed, '' Zeal has 
turned the poor man's head." It was zeal such as 
this which placed the knife in Ravaillac's hand. 

The misgivings of the King were intensified by the 
warnings of Villeroy and Jeannin and of others of 
his Council, who were either honestly averse to a 



45 o Henry of Navarre. [i60d- 

war with Spain or opposed to a policy supported 
by their rivals. In addition to these causes of 
disquiet he was plagued by the lamentations and 
importunities of his wife. Her disappointment that 
the King would not entertain the project of an 
alliance with Spain, the soreness which, however ac- 
customed to his ostentatious infidelity, she could 
not but feel at his preposterous passion for the 
Princess of Conde, scarcely needed to be in- 
flamed by the malice of Leonora Galigai, and 
Concini, to produce domestic storms very displeas- 
ing to Henry, who wished to be surrounded by con- 
tented faces. He tried to propitiate his wife by 
appointing her Regent during his absence, and by 
granting her desire to be solemnly anointed and 
crowned Queen of France. A ceremony which 
would add to the security and dignity of her posi- 
tion and make her claim to the Regency in the 
event of the King's death more indisputable. Henry 
did not make this last concession very readily. The 
Queen's coronation delayed his departure to the 
army and the opening of the campaign three weeks 
(till May 19th), and cost much money at a time when 
there were more serious demands on the treasury. 
Moreover he could not shake off the foreboding of 
some evil which might happen to himself, intensified 
by an impression that he would die in a carriage and 
at some public ceremony. 

On the 20th March the King signed the ordinance 
which appointed the Queen Regent and nominated 
the Council of Fifteen by whose advice she was to act. 
The most important members were the Cardinals Joy- 



16101 Assassination of the King. 45 1 

euse and Du Perron, the Duke of Mayenne, and Mar- 
shal Brissac, of the Barricades. By placing the leaders 
of the Catholic party in the Council of Regency, 
Henry apparently sought to remove the bad im- 
pression made on the orthodox by the high military 
commands bestowed on heretics. He was no doubt 
confident that the dread of displeasing a victorious 
sovereign would secure the co-operation of the 
Council in his poHcy, however distasteful to them. 
Mayenne, moreover, had given repeated proofs of 
loyalty and did not appear to be implicated in the 
intrigues, by which the younger members of his 
family had lately annoyed the King. 

On May 13th the Queen was crowned with great 
splendour at St. Denis. On the i6th she was to 
make a state progress through the streets of Paris. 
On the 19th her husband was to leave the capital to 
take the command of the well-equipped army of 
35,000 men assembled since April at Chalons. 

It was not yet known whether the Archdukes 
would allow the French to cross their territory as 
friends. Henry perhaps hoped that they would not. 
Whatever its discipline and valour, the small army 
under the orders of Spinola at Namur could scarcely 
be a match for his superior forces, and if it were 
defeated the Netherlands would be at his mercy. 
A few thousand men would suffice to drive the 
Archduke Leopold out of Juliers, and it is uncertain 
what use he intended to make of his army if Arch- 
duke Albert gave him no pretext for commencing 
hostilities. Perhaps he himself hardly knew in what 
direction the most decisive blow might be struck, 



452 Henry of Navarre, [1609- 

and meant to be guided by events and by the action 
of his opponents. 

On the morning after the Queen's coronation 
Henry was restless and anxious. " When I am no 
more," he said to the Duke of Guise and others 
standing by, " you will know what you have lost." 
After dinner he threw himself on his bed, but could 
not sleep. He then thought he would visit Sully, 
who was unwell at the Arsenal. Once or twice he 
left the room, but came back, saying to the Queen, 
"My dear, shall I go?" She, seeing him so unde- 
cided, begged him to stay, but at last he made up 
his mind, kissed her and went. 

He got into his coach with the Dukes of Epernon 
and Montbazon, the Marquis of La Force, and four 
other gentlemen. Dismissing the captain of his 
guards he started for the Arsenal escorted only by 
some footmen, who ran or walked with the carriage, 
one of the clumsy conveyances then used, something 
between a cart and a four-post bed with leather cur- 
tains on wheels. As they turned out of the Rue St. 
Honore into the Rue de la Ferronerie, a narrow lane 
running along one of the sides of the Cemetery of 
the Innocents, the footmen made a cut across the 
cemetery to meet the carriage at the other end of 
the street. A httle way down the Rue de la Fer- 
ronerie the King's coach was obliged to draw close 
up to the side and then to stop in passing two carts. 
As it stopped a man jumped on one of the hind 
wheels, leant over into the carriage and plunged a 
knife twice into the breast of the King who was 
leaning forward with his arm round Epernon's 



1610] Assassination of the King. 453 

shoulder. Henry scarcely uttered a cry ; the second 
blow severed one of the large arteries close to the 
heart. A gentleman was about to run his sword 
into the assassin, who stood, knife in hand, as if 
astonished at what he had done and making no 
attempt to escape, but Epernon forbade him on his 
life to hurt the man, whom the King's attendants 
protected from the fury of the collecting crowd. 
The curtains of the coach were drawn, the people 
were told that the King was only wounded and his 
lifeless body was carried back to the Louvre. 

In a second the knife of a mad fanatic had altered 
the course of the world's history. Had Henry IV. 
prospered in the undertaking he meditated, and 
assuredly the chances were much in his favour, Ger- 
many would have been spared the horrors of the 
Thirty Years' War, the ruin of her material prosper- 
ity, the paralysis for a time of all intellectual energy 
and growth. Protestantism would have become 
predominant, or at least would not have been 
crushed, in Hungary and Bohemia and other Aus- 
trian dominions. The House of Savoy would have 
founded an Italian kingdom two centuries and a 
half before the time when an allied French and 
Piedmontese army drove the Austrians out of Lom- 
bardy. Yet we must not forget that the triumph of 
Henry IV. would have raised France to a pre- 
eminence such as that to which she attained during 
the first years of the present century. Henry of 
Bourbon, no doubt, would not have used his power 
in the same fashion as Napoleon Buonaparte. But 
who could answer for his successors? Would it 



454 Henry of Navarre. [1609- 

have been well for the independence of European 
nationalities, for progress and liberty, had the ambi- 
tious egotism of a Lewis XIV. been able without 
fear of resistance to determine the destinies of 
Europe. France herself might have perished like 
Spain, exhausted by the despotism which drew from 
her the strength to enslave others. But it is as un- 
profitable as it is easy to speculate on what might 
have been, had things not been as they were. 

No French king was ever more deeply and gener- 
ally lamented than '' the Bearnese." Eye-witnesses 
wrote that it was impossible to describe the grief 
and tears of the Parisians. '* What will become of 
you ? " men were heard to say to their children, 
"you have lost your father! " 

In the provinces the country-people gathered along 
the highways in anxious crowds to ask travellers 
whether the King indeed was dead ? When assured 
that this was so they dispersed grief-stricken and 
with frantic lamentations to their houses. Some of 
the educated classes, like De Vic, the Governor. of 
Dieppe, took to their beds and died of grief. A 
touching tribute to the King's memory was offered 
by the mob, who received the Protestants on their 
way to service at Charenton not with the usual in- 
sults, but with demonstrations of affection and 
respect. 

The Queen, who by the loss of her faithless hus- 
band, had become the first person in the State, and 
who could now indulge unchecked her fondness for 
her unworthy favourites, those favourites themselves, 
the partisans of Spain, the great nobles who looked 




DEATH MASK TAKEN FROM FACE OF HENRY IV. 



1610] Assassination of the King. 455 

forward with joyful anticipation to a weak and 
divided Regency, — all these had gained too much by 
the King's death for it to be believed that they sin- 
cerely lamented him. It was natural, therefore, that 
in an age fertile in such crimes, it should have been 
reported that his murderer was merely the tool of 
others, a weapon wrought and fashioned to take a 
life like Jacques Clement and Balthazar Gerard. 

The Queen and the Concinis, the Jesuits and 
Spain, Epernon and Madame de Verneuil have been 
severally accused of having at least been privy to 
the murder of Henry IV. Some historians like 
M. Michelet appear to think that all the powers of 
darkness were leagued together to quench the light of 
France. Yet it seems scarcely possible to condemn 
the mistress and not to absolve the wife, and if, as 
Voltaire remarks, Ravaillac was incited to kill the 
King by the Spaniards at Naples, he was not sub- 
orned by Epernon at Angouleme. 

But all such suppositions are at variance with the 
account which the assassin gave of himself and of 
his motives ; an account which was plain and consis- 
tent, corroborated by independent evidence, never 
shaken by the most painful bodily and mental tor- 
tures, and which entirely negatives the assumption 
that Ravaillac was the instrument of others or even 
that he had accomplices. 

Francis Ravaillac had entered a convent of Ber- 
nardins, but at the end of his noviciate was rejected 
on account of his fantastic and extravagant conduct. 
He next attempted to gain his living as a school- 
master at his native Angouleme, but a gloomy and 



45^ Henry of Navarre. 



[1609 



forbidding exterior, a visionary and disordered in- 
tellect were not likely to rcconimcnd him as an 
instructor of youth; and he was more tlian once 
imprisoned for debt. 

The shrill hysterical rhetoric of the preachers who 
continued the traditions of the League, their fierce 
denunciations of heresy and of the King who allowed 
the accursed thing to remain in the midst of his 
people to draw down God's judgment upon them, 
the casuistic subtleties of the books, which justified 
means by ends, and taught that it was better that one 
man should suffer than the people perish, wrought 
upon the distempered imagination of the starving 
enthusiast. His existence was perhaps wretched, yet 
life is life, and that devotion is respectable, however 
mistaken, which is prepared to sacrifice existence for 
the supposed good of others. Nor did Ravaillac w'ish 
to shed blood unnecessarily. Before he killed the 
Kiner he determined to warn him of the errors of his 
ways, to give him room for amendment. If he could 
persuade him to abandon his heretical allies and to 
exterminate his heretical subjects, all would be well. 
For a whole month the fanatic sought in vain to 
obtain an interview (Christmas, 1609). Then he left 
Paris and returned to Angouleme. Before Easter 
he was back again in the capital, so poor that he 
was obliged to steal the knife with which he hoped 
to slay the enemy of true religion. 

Yet again doubts and scruples arose. He broke 
otT the point of his knife and set out once more for 
Angouleme. As he knelt at Etampes before a cruci- 
fix, the wounds and sorrow of the Redeemer seemed 



16101 Assassination of the Kijig. 457 

to reproach him for indifference to the sufferings of 
Christ's Church. He heard moreover that the King 
was about to attack God in the person of his Vicar. 
Hesitation now gave place to a firm resolve ; he 
repointed his knife upon a stone, turned his face 
towards Paris and watched with dogged determina- 
tion for an opportunity to kill the tyrant, for he had 
learnt in his books, that the prince is a tyrant who 
refuses obedience to the Church and leagues him- 
self with the unrighteous against God's people. 

That he had no accomplices he persisted in assert- 
ing under the most horrible torments and at the 
moment of his death, when his confessor threatened 
him, unless he spoke the truth, with the most certain 
pains of hell. And if he had accomplices would he 
have been reduced to stealing the knife wherewith 
to execute his purpose? He was equally positive 
that he had not been encouraged or instigated to 
murder the King by anybody or anything, except 
the sermons he had heard and the books he had 
read. He had expected all good Catholics to sym- 
pathise with him and to bless him for what he 
had done. Perhaps he remembered the images of 
Jacques Clement, exalted on the altars and vener- 
ated with honours almost divine. He was amazed 
and distressed by the howls of execration with 
which his appearance was greeted, by the frantic 
efforts of the mob to snatch him from his guards 
and to tear him limb from limb, by the yells and 
curses which answered the request of his confessor, 
that the people should pray for him while he suf- 
fered his barbarous doom. 



458 Henry of Navarre. [I609- 

The despair of all patriots, the scarcely dissembled 
satisfaction of the domestic and foreign enemies of 
France at the King's death are a convincing proof 
of his greatness. We may find another in the 
almost enthusiastic admiration felt for him by many 
of those who lived in his intimacy, even when they 
were severe censors of his failings. Aubigne was a 
caustic, often an ungenerous critic of a prince who, 
he beheved, had failed fully to appreciate his own 
transcendant merits, but after relating an instance of 
Henry's frank magnanimity, he exclaims in a tone of 
the sincerest conviction : '' Such was the King our 
master, if he had his faults he had also sublime vir- 
tues." And this evidence has all the more weight 
because many of Henry's weaknesses and shortcom- 
ings were of the kind which most prevent a man 
from appearing heroic to those about him. He in- 
herited from his spendthrift father Antony of Bour- 
bon, whose attendants sent back each evening the 
articles he had pilfered during the day, that unrea- 
soning delight in small gains of which such klep- 
tomania appears to be the exaggeration. This 
tendency made him mean in small matters, greedy 
of winning in the games of chance to which he was 
addicted, and out of temper when he lost. 

His sensuahty was, as we have seen, unbridled and 
not over nice in the gratification it demanded. A 
liking for coarse food highly spiced and redolent of 
garlic, for heavy perfumes and full-bodied wines, a 
neglect of personal cleanliness, remarkable even in 
the 17th century, may be explained by the circum- 
stances of a life spent in the saddle and under arms, 



1610] Assassination of the King. 459 

but contrasted with the more refined luxury of his 
predecessor, and indicate a coarseness of material 
and moral perception, which sometimes betrayed it- 
self in a want of tact, remarkable in a man of ready 
sympathy and of warm, though superficial and 
transient, emotions. 

Yet it is not strange that, in spite of all, he should 
have exercised great personal fascination over those 
who approached him, since even we, who are unin- 
fluenced by personal contact with so rich and 
vigorous a nature, fall to some extent under the 
charm of his unflagging energy, his boundless good 
temper, his unfeigned humanity. He gained much 
popularity by the frankness with which he treated 
his friends and his enemies, by the ostentatious 
openness of his dealings both public and private. 
He was not, he boasted, one of those princes who 
had not sufBcient virtue to be relieved from the 
necessity of concealing their faults. 

Insensible to adulation himself, he excelled in the 
art of flattering others. Whether writing with his 
own hand to the newly chosen mayor of some 
provincial town, or begging Beza to continue his 
fatherly admonitions ; or assuring the old Marshal 
that young Biron is as dear to him as a brother, and 
that it may be said of them like master, like man ; 
or addressing some companion in arms in a tone of 
military comradeship, his letters are models of skilful 
flattery. He never forgets to court his friends by 
small and cheap attentions. He offers his own 
doctor to Segur, and regrets that his many affairs 
prevent him from coming himself to help in nursing 



460 Henry of Navarre. [I609- 

him ; he will bring one or two cheerful companions 
to dine with another invalid. When he thinks that 
it will be acceptable, the dose of compliment is open 
and undisguised ; he seems to be ever on his knees 
before Queen Elizabeth, '' kissing humbly," as he 
says, "the fair and fortunate hands which hold for 
him the keys of good and evil fate." He is unspar- 
ing of protestations of affection : '* Be assured that 
I am your best friend, the best master you could 
ever have." He is prodigal of expressions of grati- 
tude and vague promises. Often full of regrets 
when, like the brother of Du Plessis-Mornay, his 
servants die at the very moment when he was going 
to do something great for them. Mornay himself 
must not imagine that he will permit him to be 
ruined in his service — '^ I am too good a master." 
If he is told that his friends are discontented, 
he assures them that he closes his ears to such 
calumnies. 

How far was he consciously insincere? It is not 
easy to answer this question in the case of a man of 
such vivacity, so susceptible of the feeling of the 
moment. He probably felt at the time what he 
expressed so warmly and so naturally. Yet he him- 
self allowed that he often meant to deceive. " Ne- 
cessity," he said, " compels me to say now this, now 
that." It is certain that he hated Epernon, and 
with good reason, yet he writes to him in a tone of 
cordial friendship, and he assures Matignon that he 
had never made any complaint of his conduct, a few 
days after filling a letter to Henry III. with charges 
against him. Nevertheless, tried by the standard of 



1610] Assassination of the King. 461 

those times — compared, for instance, with Philip II. 
or Elizabeth of England — we must allow Henry the 
praise of having been straightforward and honourable 
in word and deed. Much of the impression of in- 
sincerity and double-deahng often left upon us, is 
perhaps due to the contrast presented by his violent 
though fleeting passions and emotions, to his cold 
heart and patient, persevering ambition. 

His apparent incapacity to conceal his feehngs — 
he often turned pale and showed great agitation, his 
tears flowed readily — was of service to him. Few 
suspected how cool and calculating a politician was 
hidden under the exterior of the blunt, outspoken 
soldier and sportsman, of the genial man of pleasure. 
And when occasion required, Henry was not incapa- 
ble of self-control. J. A. De Thou tells in his 
memoirs how, when during the siege of Rouen, 
Marshal Biron had complained of some mistake 
made by Crillon, the " brave Crillon," a gallant 
officer, but a licenced and extravagant braggart, 
came to the King's quarters to excuse himself. His 
excuses soon became argumentative, then passion 
and blasphemies took the place of argument. At 
length the King told him to leave the room, yet he 
constantly reappeared, while Biron, sitting on a 
chest, pretended to be asleep and not to hear the 
insults, " mangy hound " and the like, shouted into 
his ear. Henry changed colour with impatience and 
anger, yet restrained himself. After Crillon at 
length was gone, he turned to De Thou and others 
who were marvelling at his patience. " Nature," he 
said, ''made me hot-tempered, but anger is a bad 



462 Henry of Navarre. [160$- 

counsellor, and since I have known myself I have 
always been on my guard against so dangerous a 
passion." 

Passionate he may have been by nature, but cer- 
tainly no man was ever less resentful. Michelet 
perhaps is partly right when he speaks of the un- 
fathomable depth of indifference to all things, which 
lay at the root of Henry's character. Such indiffer- 
ence would account for the fact that he does not 
appear to have been jealous of even his best loved 
mistresses. Bellegarde was more than suspected of 
having been the lover both of Gabrielle and of 
Henriette, and of even having dared to court the 
Queen, yet he never lost his master's favour. The 
same indifference may explain his extraordinary 
placability, '' his patience in bearing reproof and his 
invincible hardness of heart." Not only during the 
earlier part of his life did he bear the rebukes of the 
Calvinist ministers, and even do public penance at 
their bidding, but when King of France he listened 
not less patiently to the admonitions of more ortho- 
dox preachers. No solicitations of Madame de 
Verneuil could induce him to punish a Jesuit, who 
had reproached him for coming to hear God's word 
surrounded by his harem. Next day he went to 
hear the same Father and thanked him for his 
reproofs, only begging him to administer them more 
privately in future. 

It is perhaps not fanciful to trace some of the 
features of the character of Henry IV. in that of his 
grandson, Charles II. of England. In both we find 
the same profligacy, the same low estimate of men, 



1610] Assassination of the King. 463 

the same dislike of seeing what is unpleasant, the 
same desire to be surrounded by contented faces, the 
same physical good nature which since it expected 
nothing was incapable of righteous indignation on 
finding nothing. Yet Henry's readiness to forgive, 
may more charitably be deduced from what was 
perhaps his most excellent quality, his . unaffected 
humanity. No commander of the time was more 
anxious to provide for the comfort of his men, to 
mitigate the sufferings of his enemies. No King 
was more sincerely anxious to make the life of his 
poorer subjects less miserable. Again and again he 
warns magistrates not to inflict unduly severe punish- 
ments. Twice he flogged the Dauphin with his own 
hand, once for cutting off the head of a sparrow, and 
again for wishing that some one would kill an atten- 
dant who had displeased him. No faults were so 
unpardonable in his eyes as cruelty and vindictive- 
ness. 

Though experience had taught him to expect little 
from mankind he was not incapable of recognising 
and admiring merit and virtue. He was not, wrote 
Du Plessis-Mornay, one of those princes born in the 
purple and cradled in a Court, the predestined prey 
of sycophants, who can know of men only what they 
are told, but on the contrary was as well able as any 
in his kingdom to judge of the character and of the 
deserts of those about him. He used to say, that 
though shamefully betrayed by many he had been 
deceived by few. 

But we must beware lest in the endeavour to 
enumerate and to balance the failings and frailties, 



464 Henry of Navarre, ^ LI6I0. 

the merits and virtues of such a man, we lose all true 
appreciation of him as a whole, and so form a judg- 
ment less just than that embodied in the traditional 
view of his character. 

There was that about him which, whatever he did, 
prevented him from appearing mean or hateful, and 
it is not without reason that of all the Kings who 
have occupied the French throne, Henry of Navarre 
still retains the first place in the memory and affec- 
tion of his people. 

There have been many better men than Henry 
IV., greater statesmen, more consummate generals, 
but few men have appeared on the stage of history 
better equipped for their allotted part. The defects 
in his character were numerous and patent. He was 
no Csesar — not a man whose very failings bear the 
impress of greatness, of something above the ordi- 
nary standard of humanity — still less was he a flawless 
hero, a Marcus Aurelius, an Alfred, or a St. Lewis. 
The life of such men, like a Greek tragedy, main- 
tains throughout the same lofty and measured dig- 
nity. The life of Henry of Bourbon may rather be 
likened to an Elizabethan drama, interspersed with 
incongruities, with scenes of comedy, and even of 
low buffoonery, but perhaps for that very reason 
touching more nearly our human sympathies. 



THE END. 



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THE HERO'S DEEDS AND HARD-WON 
FAME SHALL LIVE. 



HENRY OF NAVARRE 




INDEX. 



Acadia, 358 

Achmet, Sultan, 415 

Agen, 118, 379 

Aix, Parliament of, 27 

Alava, 61 

Albert, the Cardinal-Archduke, 
310, 322 ei seq., 326, 424, 432, 
442 et seq., 451 

Albret, see Henry of, and Jane 
of. 

Alen9on, 108 

Alengon, Francis, Duke of (after- 
wards Duke of Anjou), his 
character, 92 ; watched by his 
mother, loi ; escapes and 
heads the rebels, 105, 108 ; 
concludes peace with the Court, 
109 ; opinion of the Protestants, 
117 ; mischief making at Pau, 
133 ; death, 138 ; gave Cam- 
bray to Balagny, 304 

Amiens, 286, 287, 317 ; siege of, 
319 et seq. 

Amyot, 377 

Angouleme, 455 

Angouleme, Duke of, 79 

Anhalt, Prince Christian of, 236, 
430 

Anjou, Duke of, see Henry III., 
and Alen9on. 

Anjou, House of, t6 

Antony of Bourbon, King of 
Navarre, in the power of the 



Guises, 21 ; his influence at 
Court, 29 ; changes sides, 33 ; 
reproaches Beza, 35 ; killed 
before Rouen, 41 ; his charac- 
ter, 44 ; married to Jane of 
Albret, 48 ; a Protestant, 51 ; 
reverts to Catholicism, 52 

Antwerp, 150, 423 

Arbaleste, Charlotte, Mme. Du 
Plessis-Mornay, 121 

Arques, battle of, 199 

Armada, the Invincible, 163, 224 

Arnauld, Antoine, 296 

Arras, 317 

Artois, 190, 299, 413 

Aubigne, 90, 106, T07, 133, 135, 
136, 157, 175, 200, 221, 259, 
330, 377, 382, 410, 425 

Auch, 129 

Augsburg, Peace of, 428 

Aumale, Duke of, 90 

Aumont, Marshal, 195, 197, 200, 
209 

Auneau, 159 

Auvergne, 216, 379 

Auvergne, Count of, 389, 403, 
407, 409, 417, 419 et seq. 

Avignon, T05 



B 



Balagny, 304 

Balzac, Francis de, Lord of En- 

tragues, 389, 419 et seq. 
Barneveld, Olden, 414, 432 



465 



466 



Index, 



Barriere, 267, 284 
Bassompierre, 437 et seq. 
Beam, 336 
Beaufort, Duchess of, see Ga- 

brielle. 
Beda, 4 

Belin, Count of , 201, 256, 277 
Bellegarde, 229, 231, 462 
Bergerac, Peace of, 127 
Berquin, Lewis de, 4, 5 
Beuil, Jacqueline de, 421 
Beza, 35, 51, 55, 145, 259, 459 
Birago, 77 
Biron, Marshal (the elder), 187, 

210, 212, 221, 237, 238, 241, 

244, 246, 461 
Biron, Duke of (the younger), 

244, 299, 300, 319, 322, 374, 

401 etseq. 
Blavet, 327 
Bouillon, see Turenne. 
Bourbon, Family of, 44 
Bourbon, Peter, Duke of, 44 
Bourbon, Charles, Constable of, 

ib. 
Bourbon, Charles, Cardinal of, 

138, 141, 145, 191, 204, 217 
Bourbon, the younger Cardinal 

of, 226 
Brandenburg, Elector of, 432 
Brantome, 81 

Brissac, 180, 277, 280 -f/j^^., 451 
Brittany, 203, 224, 327 
Burgundian kingdom, 225, 417 
Burgundy, 286, 297, 299, 402, 

405 
Bussy d'Amboise, 374 



Caetano, 225 

Cahors, storm of, 130 

Calais, 196, 233, 311 et seq., 326, 

327 
Calvin, his book dedicated to 
Francis I., 5 ; his doctrine, 6 ; 
favourable to political liberty, 
8 ; advocates non-resistance, 
19 ; his opinion of Antony of 
Bourbon, 45 



Cambray, 304, 327 

Canada, 358 

Canaillac, 380 

Cardenas, Don Inigo de, 445 

Casaubon, 348, 372 

Cateau-Cambresis, Peace of, 12 

Catherine de' Medici, Regent, 
21 ; favours the Reformers, 29 ; 
her character, 30 ; accepts 
L'Hopital's policy of concilia- 
tion, 31 ; urges Conde to pro- 
tect her against the Guises, 36 ; 
keeps Henry of Navarre at 
Court, 53 ; her ladies, 54 ; 
dread of Spanish interference, 
58, 61 ; alarmed at the influ- 
ence of Coligny over Charles 
IX., 73 ; determines his death, 
75 ; wishes to continue opposi- 
tion to Spain, 94 ; secures the 
succession of Henry III., loi ; 
visits the Court of Navarre, 
128 ; to make mischief, 129 ; 
opposed to the Huguenots, 140 ; 
advises Henry III. to yield to 
the League, 145 ; intercedes 
for Guise, 164; dying, 170; 
trusted La Noue, 237 ; her 
books, 372 

Catherine of Navarre, 51, 125, 
134, 227, 229, 387 

Caudebec, 243, 244 

Cecil, 71, 74, 83, 94, T05 

Chaligny, Count of, 90, 241 

Chalons, 286 

Champagne, 286, 287 

Champlain, 357 

Charenton, 218; "Temple" of, 

342, 454 
Charles IX., besieges St. Jean 
d'Angely, 57 ; disposed to 
peace, 58 ; his hatred of Spain, 
64 ; wishes to marry bis sister 
to Henry of Navarre, 69 ; in- 
fluenced by Coligny, 73 ; de- 
sires Queen of England to help 
Orange, 74 ; anger at the at- 
tempt against Coligny, 76 ; 
visits him, 77 ; consents to 



Index. 



467 



the massacre extorted by his 

mother, 78 ; his character, 91 ; 

his Government, 99 ; miserable 

death, 100 
Charles II, of England, 463 
Charolais, 327 
Chastel, 296 

Chateauneuf, Mme. de, 90 
Chatillon, 126, 159, 176, 178, 

199, 203, 238 
Cherbourg, 107 
Chicot, 90, 241 
Chrestien, Florent, 56, 373 
Clement VIII., 268, 305, 324, 

416 
Clement, Jacques, 182, 457 
Cleves, question of succession to, 

431 

Clovis, 274 

Cognac, 59 

Colbert, 125 

Coligny, presents petition from 
Reformers, 20 ; powerful after 
the death of Francis II., 21 ; 
reluctant to begin the war, 36 ; 
Conde under his influence, 41 ; 
at Jarnac, 42 ; defeated at 
Montcontour, 57 ; collects an 
army in the south, ib. ; anxious 
for peace, 59 ; invited to Court, 
62 ; reception there, ib. ; at 
Henry of Navarre's wedding, 
70 ; influence over Charles IX . , 
74 ; attempt on his life, 76 ; 
death and character, 79 ; patron 
of Du riessis-Mornay, 120 

Commines, 113 

Concini, 394, 422, 436, 451, 455 

Conde, Lewis, Prince of, rival of 
the Guises, 20 ; in their power, 
21 ; leader of the Huguenots, 
33 ; offers to rai^e 50,000 men 
against the Guises, 35 ; aban- 
dons Paris and the King, 36 ; 
his character, 40 ; death at 
Jarnac, 42 

Conde, Henry, Prince of, 43, 87, 
98, loi, 108 no, 128, 150, 
174, 369 



Conde, Henry II., Prince of, 
333, 378, 439, 440, 442, 443 

Conde, Charlotte de la Granville, 
Princess of, 

Conde, Charlotte de Montmor- 
ency, Princess of, 437 et seq, 

Corbeil, 223 

Corisande, see Grammont. 

Cosse, 62, loi, 109 

Cotton, 410 

Council, the Royal, its composi- 
tion, 63 ; decides against war 
with Spain, 74 

Coutras, battle of, 155 

Crillon, 164, 461 



D 



D' Amours, 157, 259 
Damville, Duke of, 100, 118, 126 
(after 1584, see Montmorency). 
Dauphin, the (Lewis XIII. ), 50, 

397, 414, 434, 463 
Dauphiny, 14, 27, 344 
De Monts, 357 
De Thou, J. A., 56, 121, 139, 

334, 363, 369. 372, 461 
Dieppe, 26, 196 
Dijon, 14, 286, 299, 300 
D'O, Francis, 185, 258, 272, 309, 

351 

Dohna, Fabian of, 158 

Dolet, Stephen, 11 

Dombes, Prince of, 224 

Dominicans, 306 

Doria, Carlo, 288 

D'Ossat, Cardinal, 306, 325 

Douai, 322 

Dreux, 206, 255 

Du Bourg, 15 

Du Chatel. Bishop of Macon, 11 

Duelling, 89, 369 

Du Perron, 259, 306, 372, 451 

Du Plessis-Mornay, valor at 
Eausse, 119 ; birth, education, 
character, 120 et seq. ; mission 
to Henry III., 136 ; satisfac- 
tion at death of Guise, advice 
to Henry of Navarre, 176 ; at 



468 



Indt 



ex. 



Ivry, 207 ; Villeroy attempts 
to convince him that Henry IV. 
must reform, 213 ; mission to 
Queen Elizabeth, 239 ; be- 
lieves that Henry IV. will not 
change his religion, 256; dis- 
appointed, 260 ; summoned re- 
peatedly to Court, 261 ; ill 
rewarded, 271 ; distrusts the 
King, 329 ; yet approves of his 
policy in regard to the Protes- 
tants, 381 ; and of the Edict of 
Nantes, 343 ; urges Henry IV. 
to marry again, 380 

Duprat, 4 

D'Urfe, 438 

Dutch, 73, 97, 140, 142, 150, 
195, 239, 246, 290, 299, 312, 
313, 321, 326, 414, 424, 427, 
432, 435, 446 



Eausse, 119 

Edict of Fontainebleau(i54o), 14 
Edict of Chateaubriand (1551), 10 
Edict of Compiegne (15 57). i^- 
Edict of January (1561), 31 
Edict of Bergerac (1577), 127 
Edict of Nantes (1598), 335 
Egmont, Count of, 206, 21 1 
Elizabeth of England, supported 
by Philip II., 16 ; her vacilla- 
tion a cause of the massacre of 
St, Bartholomew, 72 ; dares 
not quarrel with the French, 
94 ; plots for her assassination, 
139 ; urges Henry III. not to 
submit to the League, 146 ; he 
desires her advice, 161 ; Jeze- 
bel, 162 ; vigorously helps 
Henry IV., 196; blames his 
humanity during siege of Paris, 
220 ; sends an army into Brit- 
tany, 224 ; admired by Sixtus 
v., 225 ; sends Essex and 6,000 
men to Normandy, 233 ; angry 
at loss of her men before 
Rouen, 239 ; yet sends rein- 



forcements, 242 ; rebukes 
Henry IV. for apostasy, 265 ; 
delays to relieve Calais, 312; 
offensive and defensive treaty 
between her and Henry IV., 
313; not very forward in helping 
to retake Amiens, 320 ; warned 
by Henry IV. that she must 
make peace, 326 ; recalls her 
troops from Brittany, 327 ; 
warns Biron, 404 ; her death 
lamented by Henry IV., 413 ; 
his flattery of her, 460 

English, assist La Rochelle, 97 ; 
volunteers, 321 

Entragues, see Balzac. 

Epernon, Duke of, 90, 138, 140, 
144, 165, 188, 286, 309, 403, 
405, 407, 452, 460 

Erasmus, 4 

Ernest, Archduke, 253, 299 

Essex, Earl uf, 233, 236, 239, 
311, 404, 407 

Errard, 364 



Farnese, Alexander, Duke of 
Parma, 140, 141, 149, 163, 
189, 217, 219, 220, 237, 240, 
242 et seq., 250 

Ferdinand, Archduke, 430 

Feria, Duke of, 253 et seq., 278, 
280, 283 

Fleix, Peace of, 132 

Fleurance, 129 

Fontainebleau, 368, 386 

Fontaine Francaise, engagement 
at, 301 

Franche Comte, 190, 290, 297, 

299. 413 
Francis I., 3, 5, 46, 372 
Francis II., 18, 21, 50 
Fuentes, Count of, 303, 311 



Gabrielle d'Estrees, 229 ei seq. 
263, 290, 307, 379 et seq. 



Index. 



469 



Geneva, 9, 400 

Germany, 155, 233, 413, 423, 
428 et seq., 434, 435 

Givry, 186, 287 

Gondi, Bishop of Paris, 219 

Gondi, Count of Retz, 77 

Grammont, Corisande, Countess 
of, 134, 138, 156, 175, 227 

Gregory XIV., 225 

Guise, Francis, Duke of, 17, 35, 
36, 41 

Guise, Henry, Duke of, privy to 
plot against Coligny, 76, 78 ; 
superintends his murder, 79 ; 
affects humanity, 83 ; his char- 
acter, 92 ; offers to protect 
Du Plessis-Mornay, 120 ; Lieu- 
tenant-General of the League, 
144 ; surprises Germans at 
Auneau, 159; hated by Henry 
III., 160; enters Paris in de- 
fiance of the King, 164 ; at 
the barricades, 165 ; objects of 
his ambition, 166; despises 
Henry III., 169: assassinated, 
170 ; blood calls for blood, 339 

Guise, Charles, Duke of, 190, 
243, 248, 254, 286, 288, 436, 

451 
Guise, Charles of. Cardinal of 

Lorraine, 17 ^/ j-t-^., 105 
Guise, Lewis, Cardinal of,, 171 
Guise, Mademoiselle de, 397 
Guises, their policy and ambi- 
tion, 16 ; summon the States- 
General, 20; their toleration, 
34 ; provoke the outbreak of 
w^ar, 35 ; distrusted by Philip 
II., 137 ; ally themselves with 
Spain, 141 ; distrust Catherine 
de' Medici, 154 ; their party, 
183 ; claims on Provence, 288; 
their intrigues, 45 1 

H 

Hall, conference at, 434 
Hall, Treaty of, 446 
Harlay, 363, 372 



Havre, 203, 234 

Henriette d'Entragues, 389 ct 
seq., 396 et seq., 418 et seq., 
436, 455 

Henry of Albret, King of Na- 
varre, 46, 48, 49 

Henry II., persecutes the Prot- 
estants, 10 ; killed, 15 ; intro- 
duces Jesuits into France, 293 

Henry III., suspected of death 
of Conde, 42 ; victorious at 
Montcontour, 57 ; at his sister 
Margaret's wedding, 70 ; the 
accomplice of his mother in 
the plot against Coligny, 75, 
and in persuading Charles IX. 
to consent to the massacre, 77; 
his account of the massacre, 
79 ; his effeminate dress and 
character, 91, 116 ; King of 
Poland, 98 ; compelled to 
leave France, 100 ; flies from 
Poland yet loiters on his way 
to France, 102 ; progress in 
the South, 104 ; his foolish 
profusion and superstition, 
105 ; his policy and errors, 

114 ; etiquette at his Court, 

115 ; offers fair terms to the 
Huguenots, 127 ; concludes 
Peace of Fleix, 132 ; his mis- 
government, ib. ; insults his 
sister Margaret, 136 ; wishes 
Navarre to conform, 139 ; rec- 
ognises him as his heir and 
accepts the Garter, 141 ; dares 
not resist the League, 144 ; 
yet M^arns Navarre to be on 
his guard, 146 ; surrenders to 
the League, 148 ; hates Guise, 
160 ; perplexity, 161 ; defied 
by Guise, 164 ; compelled to 
fly from Paris, 166 ; tries to 
conciliate the League and the 
Estates at Blois, 168 ; deter- 
mines to get rid of Guise, 169; 
assassination of Guise and con- 
seouences to the King, 171 
ii si-q. ; he shows favour to 



470 



Index, 



Chatillon, 178 ; interview with 
Navarre, 179 ; besieges Paris, 
181 ; assassinated, 182 ; names 
Henry of Navarre his suc- 
cessor, 185 
Henry IV., swears fidelity to the 
Protestant cause, 43 ; his birth 
and early education, 49 ; at 
the French Court, 52 ^/ seq. ; 
with his mother at Nerac, 55 ; 
the source of his versatility, 
56 ; accompanies Coligny in 
the campaign of Montcontour 
and afterwards, 59 ; his do- 
mains, 61 ; proposed husband 
of Margaret of Valois, 62, 63 ; 
arrangements for the wedding, 
68 ; the ceremony, 69 ; spared 
after massacre of St. Barthol- 
omew, 87 ; difficulty of his 
position, 88 ; serves at siege of 
La Rochelle, 97 ; carefully 
guarded by the Queen- Mother 
after death of Charles IX.; 
determines to escape, 105 ; 
and does so, 107 ; awaits 
events, 109 ; readmitted into 
Calvinist Communion, 117 ; 
protector of the churches, ib. ; 
receives a deputation from the 
Estates, 118 ; his valour at 
Eausse, 119 ; agrees to Peace 
of Bergerac, 126 ; visited by 
the Queen-Mother, 128 ; en- 
gages in a futile war, 129 ; 
storms Cahors, 130; concludes 
Peace of Fleix, 132 ; quarrels 
with his wife, 133 ; wishes to 
marry the Countess of Gram- 
mont, 135 ; rejects the offers 
of Philip II., 137 ; invited to 
Court by Henry III., 138 ; 
offers to help the King against 
the League, 145 ; his stirring 
letters, 151 ; his manifesto, 
152 ; answer to Papal excom- 
munication, 153 ; wins battle 
of Coutras, 155 ; his troubles 
in 1587-8, T73; grieves for 



Conde, 175 ; rejoices at the 
death of Guise, 176 : con- 
venient illness, ib. ; his inter- 
view with Henry III. and 
appearance, 179 ; his acces- 
sion, 183 ; his title to the 
throne based on indefeasible 
hereditary right, 184; reply to 
demands of Catholic courtiers, 
186 ; recognised by a large 
part of the army and by the 
Swiss, 187 ; his army melts 
away, 188 ; his opponents 
divided, 190 ; his difficulties 
192 et scq. ; retires into Nor- 
mandy, 195 ; refuses to buy 
Elizabeth's help by surrender 
of Calais, 196 ; takes up a 
strong position before Dieppe, 
197 ; defeats Mayenne, 199 ; 
recognised by Venetian Senate, 
202 ; attacks suburbs of Paris, 
ib. ;. marches to the west, 203 ; 
attacks the towns around Paris, 
206 ; defeats Mayenne at Ivry, 
209 et seq. ; prevented from 
advancing on Paris by Biron, 
212 ; general desire for his 
conversion, 213 ; his own feel- 
ings in regard to this, 214 ; 
determines to blockade Paris, 
216 ; advised by Biron to raise 
the siege and meet Parma, 
221 : who eludes him, 222 ; 
his army disperses, 222 ; dis- 
content and intrigues among 
his supporters, 225 et seq. ; 
quarrels with Corisande, 228 ; 
having made the acquaintance 
of Gabrielle d'Eslrees, 229 ; 
promises and " receives in- 
struction " and confirms the 
edicts protecting the Hugue- 
nots, 232 ; collects a Protestant 
army, 233 ; with which he 
besieges Rouen, 236 ; meets 
Parma at Aumale and is 
wounded, 240 ; his energy, 
241 ; continues the siege of 



Index. 



471 



Rouen on Parma's retreat, 
242 ; obliged to raise the siege 
by Parma, ib. ; baffled by ill 
will of Biron and skill of 
Parma, 244 ; obliged to dis- 
band his army, 246 ; an- 
nounces to envoys of the Es- 
tates that he will ' ' receive in- 
struction within two months," 
254 ; his conversion, 256 
et seq. ; effects of his con- 
version, 266 ; attempts against 
his life, 267 ; the Pope will not 
absolve him, 268 ; he grants 
very favourable terms to rebels, 
270 et seq. ; importance of 
coronation ceremony, 272 ; 
coronation at Chartres, 274 ; 
negotiates surrender of Paris, 
276 ; pays Brissac liberally for 
opening the gates, 279 ; enters 
Paris, 281 ; his clemency, 287; 
makes Guise Governor of 
Provence, 288 ; determines to 
attack Spain, 290 ; his at- 
tempted assassination by 
Jacques Clement, 295 ; ban- 
ishes the Jesuits, ib. ; rebukes 
the delays of Parliament and 
Chambre des Comtes, 298 ; 
joins Biron in Burgundy, 300 ; 
wins skirmish of Fontaine 
Fran9aise, 301 ; hurries north 
on hearing of siege of Cambray, 
304 ; besieges La Fere, 305 ; 
absolved by Clement VIII., 
306 ; his policy of conciliation 
not unsuccessful, 309 ; his des- 
titution, 310 ; unable to save 
Calais, 311 ; takes La Fere, 
312 ; treaty with Elizabeth 
and Dutch, 313 ; summons an 
Assembly of Notables, 314 ; 
his frank eloquence, 316 ; hears 
of the surprise of Amiens, 318; 
begs for supplies, 319 ; defeats 
Archduke Albert's attempt to 
relieve Amiens, 322 ; refuses 
to abandon his allies, 325 ; yet 



opens negotiations with Spain, 
326 ; and concludes peace (of 
Vervins), 327 ; grants favour- 
able terms to Mercoeur, 328 ; 
secures toleration and civil 
rights to the Huguenots by the 
Edict of Nantes, 329 et seq. ; 
insists that the Edict shall not 
be a dead letter, 338 et seq. ; 
continues to watch over the 
interests of the Protestants, 
342 et seq. ; endeavours to re- 
form the finances, 347 ; the 
public distress and its causes, 
350 et seq. ; he fosters manu- 
factures in opposition to Sully, 
354 ; also maritime and colonial 
enterprise, 356 et seq.; inter- 
ested in agriculture, 358 ; re- 
organises the army, 364 ; par- 
dons 7,000 gentlemen for kill- 
ing their adversaries in duels, 
369 ; did more for the material 
welfare than for the intellectual 
and moral progress of his sub- 
jects, 371 et seq. ; careless of 
literature, 373 ; a greater pa- 
tron of painting and sculpture, 
375 ; coarseness of manners at 
his Court, 376 ; anxiety about 
his life, 378 ; his growing de- 
votion to Gabrielle d'Estrees, 
379 ; wishes to marry her, 382, 
this marriage unpopular, 385 ; 
his grief at Gabrielle's death, 
387 ; resigns himself to marry 
Mary de' Medici, 388 ; but 
falls in love with Henriette 
d'Entragues, 389 et seq. ; 
meets his wife at Lyons, 394 ; 
introduces mistress and wife, 
396 ; pleased by birth of a 
Dauphin, 397 ; rapid successes 
against Savoy, 400 ; his gen- 
erous treatment of Biron, 401; 
who confesses something of 
his intrigues with the Duke of 
Savoy, 402 ; and is sent to 
England, 404; he takes pre- 



472 



Index. 



Henry IV. — [Continued.) 

cautions against the . con- 
spiracy, 405 ; and summons 
Biron to Fontainebleau, 406 ; 
would have pardoned him even 
at the last, ib. ; determines to 
readmit the Jesuits, 411 ; waits 
for a favourable opportunity to 
attack Spain and Austria, 413; 
negotiations with James I., 
414 ; and the Turks, 416 ; 
mediates between Paul V. and 
Venice, 416 ; discovers con- 
spiracy of the Entragues with 
Spain, 419 ; tries to break with 
Henriette, 420 ; but can not 
and therefore pardons her 
father and brother, 421 ; com- 
pels Bouillon to surrender 
Sedan, 423 ; helps the Dutch 
to negotiate a peace with 
Spain, 424 ; rejects overtures 
for marriage treaty with Spain, 
425 ; and determined to inter- 
fere in affairs of Juliers-Cleves, 

432 ; hopes for alliance of 
England and Italian powers, 

433 ; aspires to rule wherever 
French is spoken, 434 ; disap- 
pointed by backwardness of 
his allies, 435 ; merited un- 
happiness of his private life, 
436 ; falls in love with Char- 
lotte de Montmorency, 437 ; 
marries her to the Prince of 
Conde, 439 ; follows her in 
disguise, 440 ; indignant that 
Conde should carry her out of 
the country, 441 ; threatens 
the Archduke with war unless 
they give up the Princess, 444; 
the threat not seriously meant, 
445 ; angry interview with the 
Spanish ambassador, ib. ; pre- 
pares to open the campaign 
with overwhelming forces, 447 ; 
yet unusually anxious, 448 ; 
opposition to his policy by the 
Queen and his Catholic ad- 



visers, 449 ; tries to propitiate 
the Queen by allowing her to 
be crowned, 450 ; gloomy fore- 
bodings, 452 ; his assassina- 
tion, 453 ; his character, 458 
et seq. 

Henry, Prince of Wales, 415, 
446 

Holland, see Dutch 

Hugh Capet, 273 

Huguenots, see Protestants 

Hulst, 312 

Humieres, 112 



Ibarra, 280, 283 

Isabella the Infanta, 253 et seq.\ 

310, 324, 399, 442 et seq. 
Ivry, battle of, 208, 331 



Jane of Albret, Queen of Na- 
varre, presents her son to the 
army, 43 ; married to Antony 
of Bourbon, 48 ; death of her 
children, ib. ; hurries to Pau 
for the birth of her son Henry, 
49 ; slowly converted but faith- 
ful to Protestantism, 51 ; edu- 
cates her son, 55 ; comes to 
Court to arrange his marriage, 
64 ; her opinion of Margaret 
of Valois, 65 ; fears for her 
son, 66 ; her death, 69 ; zeal 
for learning, 373 

James I. of England, 414, 433, 
435, 446 

Jarnac, battle of, 42 

Jeannin, 121, 205, 235, 283, 424, 
427, 432, 440, 444, 449 

Jesuits, 138, 143, 267, 284, 292 
et seq. ; 305, 345, 410, 424, 
429, 449, 455 

Joan of Arc, 273 

John Casimir, Count Palatine, 
no, 158 

Joyeuse, Duke of, 140, 145, 155 

Joyeuse, Cardinal, 450 



Index. 



473 



La Charite, 59 

La Fere, 286, 305, 311, 312 

La Fin, 401, 405, 409 

La Force, Marquis of, 447, 452 

La Gaucherie, 51, 54, 55 

Languedoc, 19, 100, 102, 150, 

225, 286, 344 
La Noue, 29, 117, 118, 120, 130, 

200, 212, 221, 223, 237, 271, 

374 

Laon, 286, 287 

La Reole, 129 

La Rochefoucauld, Count of, 42, 
69 

La Rochelle, 26, 59, 62 ; siege 
of, 97, 117, 130, 175 

La Tremoille, Duke of Thouars, 
150, 188, 212, 26r, 335 

League, The, supplied with prin- 
ciples by Protestant writers, 
97 ; neither patriotic nor popu- 
lar, 104; its formation, 112; 
organisation in Paris, 142 ; its 
manifesto, 143 ; new ultima- 
tum to Henry III,, 162 ; its 
unpopularity, 169 ; atrocities of 
its defenders, 177, 213 ; more 
and more Spanish, 180, 189 ; 
yet not all Leaguers subservi- 
ent to Philip II., 204 ; May- 
enne dissolves the Council 
General, 205 ; condemned by 
Villeroy, 214 ; its army anni- 
hilated at Ivry, 216 ; on bad 
terms with Sixtus V. , 225 ; the 
extreme party wish that Philip 
II. might rule over them, 234 ; 
can only continue to exist by 
his assistance, 246 

Le Fevre, i 

Le Mans, 107, 203, 216 

Leo XL, 415 

Leonora, Dosi or Galigai, 374, 
422, 436, 451 

Leopold, Archduke, 434, 451 

Le Pollet, 198, 199 

Lepsius, 373 



Lerma, Duke of, 402 

Lesdiguieres, 286, 374, 400, 447 

L'Estoile, 89, 121, 162, 193, 368 

Lewis VL, 274 

Lewis X,, 273 

Lewis XL, 276 

Lewis XIV., 266, 454 

L'Hopital, 31 et seq. 

L'Huillier, 281 

Liancourt, 230 

Longpre, 322 

Longueville, Duke of, 195, 197, 

200, 299, 302 
Lorraine, Duke of, 144, 289 
Lorraine, Claude, Duchess of, 

85, 145 
Louvre, 57, 166, 282, 368 
Lover's War, 129 
Low Countries, see Dutch. 
Loyola, 292 
Luther, 3 
Luxembourg, 297, 299 



M 



Machiavelli, 30, 64, 113 

Malesherbes, castle of, 389 

Malherbe, 377, 392, 440 

Marcoussis, 419 

Margaret of Angouleme, 3, 46, 47 

Margaret of Valois, her infant 
orthodoxy, 29 ; negotiations for 
her marriage to King of Portu- 
gal, 61 ; her hand offered to 
Henry of Navarre, 62 ; her 
character, 67 ; marriage, 69 ; 
her account of the night of St. 
Bartholomew, 85 ; a friend to 
her husband, 88 ; rejoins him, 
128; her Court at Pau, 133; 
returns to her mother, 181 ; 
insulted by Henry III., ib. ; 
a prisoner in Auvergne, 379 ; 
agrees to a divorce, 381 ; writes 
to Gabrielle d'Estrees, 385 

Mariana, 409 

Marmoustier, 274 

Marot, II, 377 

Marseilles, 288, 357 



474 



Index, 



Mary de' Medici, her birth, 388 ; 
married by proxy to Henry IV. , 

392 ; her journey to Lyons, 

393 ; appearance and character, 

394 ; her favourites, ih. ; com- 
plains of the pretensions of 
Henriette d'Entragues, 418 ; 
less jealous of three rivals than 
of one, 422 ; desires alliance 
with Spain, 435 ; her children, 
436 ; appointed Regent during 
the King's absence, 430 ; sus- 
pected of being privy to her 
husband's murder, 454 

Mary, Queen of Scots, 16, 143 

Matthias, Archduke, 430 

Maurevert, 90 

Maximilian II., 429 

Mayenne, Charles of Loriaine, 
Duke of, 90, 141 ; recognised 
as head ojf the League, 173 ; 
subservient to Philip II., 180 ; 
jealous of his nephew, Guise, 
190 ; his character, 191 ; de- 
feated at Arques, 199 ; negoti- 
ates with Philip II., 204; ap- 
points a Council of State, 205 ; 
flight at Ivry, 212 ; humiliated 
by Parma, 222 ; summons the 
States-General, 234 ; wishes to 
prevent the marriage of Guise 
and the Infanta Isabella, 235 ; 
Urged by Jeannin to come to 
terms with the King, ib. ; joins 
Parma to relieve Rouen, 240 ; 
which he hopes to hold without 
Spanish help, 241 ; but is mis- 
taken, 242 ; ousts the " Six- 
teen," 248 ; his unpopularity, 
249 ; summons the States-Gen- 
eral to Paris, 250 ; takes Noy- 
on, 255 ; accepts an armistice, 
but sends his son-in-law to 
Madrid, 268 ; re-establishes the 
Council of Sixteen, 277 ; leaves 
Paris, 278 ; pertinacious in dis- 
loyalty, 289 ; joins the Consta- 
ble of Castile in Franche- 
Comte, 300 ; retires to Chalons, 



302 ; submits to the King, 307, 
his character, 308 ; before 
Amiens, 309 ; . where he does 
good service, 323 ; appointed 
a member of the Council of 
Regency, 451 

Meaux, 270 

Mendoza, 139, 141, 180, 216, 
241 

Mercoeur, Duke of, 224, 289, 

327 
Meulan, 206 
Miossans, Mme. de, 49 
Monluc, 29, 304 
Montauban, 61, 97 
Montbazon, Duke of, 447, 452 
Montcontour, battle of, 57 
Montgomery, Count of, 15, 83, 

99, 100 
Montmorency, Constable, 4, 16, 

21, 25, 6r 
Montmorency, Duke of, 99, 100, 

109, 126, 146, 150, 225, 309, 

317, 403, 405, 443 
Montpensier, Duchess of, 162, 

182, 218, 283, 284 
Montpensier, Duke of, 210, 312 
Moriscos, 415, 434, 447 
Mornay, see Du Plessis. 

N 

Nangay, M, de, 86 
Naples, 433 
Napoleon, 45, 156, 454 
Nassau, 94 ; see Orange. 
Navarre, kingdom of, 45 
Nemours, Duke of, 210 
Nemours, Duchess of, 284, 396 
Nerac, 51, 52, 55, 133, 379 
Neuburg, Count Palatine of, 431 
Nevers, Duke of, 77, 268, 303 
Nimes, 105 
Normandy, 20, 180, 203, 236, 

344 
Noyon, 255 



Orange, Wilham, Prince of, 74, 
94, 120 



Index. 



475 



Orange, Maurice, Prince of, 195, 

224, 415, 424, 447 
Orange, Princess of, 387 
Ostend, 415, 423 



Palissy, Bernard, 84 

Pare, Ambrose, 79 

Paris, centre of orthodoxy, 28 ; 
Protestants among the higher 
clergy at Court, 29 ; numerous 
religious powers there, ib. ; 
ferocity of inhabitants, 83 ; 
the barricades, 165 ; expels 
Henry III., 166 ; grief for 
death of Guise, 172 ; besieged 
by Henry III., 181 ; rejoicings 
at his murder, 182 ; suburbs 
attacked by Henry IV., 203 ; 
blockaded after Ivry, 217 ; re- 
liance on Philip II., 217; 
famine, 218 ; peace or bread, 
219 ; relieved by Parma, 222 ; 
garrisoned by Spaniards, 224 ; 
famine again, 234 ; detestation 
of the League, 236 ; the Six- 
teen attempt a reign of terror 
in Paris, 248 ; Moderates in- 
sist on negotiations, 249 ; sur- 
render only prevented by 
Spaniards, 277 ; terms of sur- 
render, 279 ; changes hands 
peaceably, 280 ; filthy squalor 
of the streets, 365 ; improved 
by Henry IV., 366 et seq. 

Parhament of Paris, hesitates to 
punisl^heretics, 15 ; hostile to 
the Reformers, 24 ; opposes 
the League, 154 ; declares the 
Salic law inviolable, 255 ; an- 
nuls everything done to the 
prejudice of the Crown, 285 ; 
scolded by Henry IV., 298 ; 
remonstrates against lenient 
treatment of Mayenne, 307 ; 
compelled by the King to reg- 
ister the Edict of Nantes, 339 ; 
effect on it of system of pur- 



chase, 362 ; sentences Biron, 
407 ; protests against the re- 
turn of the Jesuits, 411 

Parliament, Protestant judges in, 
338 

Parma, see Farnese. 

Pau, 49, 52, 57 ; Court of, 133 

Paul v., 416, 433. 435, 447 

Pazzi, 393 

Petrucci, 61 

Philip II., enemy of the House 
of Guise, 16 ; proposed as hus- 
band to Jane of Albret, 47 ; 
would have liked to burn her, 
54 ; expects a high price for 
helping French Catholics, 58 ; 
common enemy of Protestant- 
ism, 71 ; overtures to Henry 
of Navarre, 137 ; allies himself 
with the Guises, 142 ; claim 
of his daughter to French 
Crown, 146 ; promises to help 
the League, 189; expects the 
title of the Infanta Isabella to 
be recognised, 205, 234 ; more 
ready to send men than money 
to France, 214; neglects 
Netherlands for France, 224 ; 
sends 4,000 men to Brittany, 
234 ; cruel treatment of La 
None, 237 ; determines to send 
Parma to impose his wish on 
the Estates at Paris, 250 ; in- 
struction to Feria, 254 ; treats 
with Epernon, 286 ; every- 
where active against Henry 
IV., 289 ; not to be bearded 
with impunity, 291 ; ally of 
the Jesuits, 292 ; sends great 
reinforcements to the Low 
Countries, 303 ; quarrels with 
the Jesuits, 305 ; formidable 
though bankrupt, 310 ; wishes 
to leave peace to his succes- 
sors, 324 
Philip III., 402, 419, 425, 427. 

433, 446, 447 
Picardy, 303 
Pignerol, 102 



476 



Index, 



Place Royale, 367 
Poirson, 372 
Poissy, 206 
Poitou, 344 

Politicians (Moderate party), 61, 
72, 99, 116, 153, 180, 249, 

315 

Portocarrero, 317, 322 

Protestants, in France, opponents 
of despotism, 8 ; organised by 
Calvin, 9 ; sufferings under 
Francis I. and Henry II., 10 
et seq. ; their organisation and 
numbers, 13 ; of all ranks, 14 ; 
rejoice at death of Henry II., 
16 ; called Huguenots, 19 ; 
conspire against the Guises, 
20 ; their policy at Estates of 
1 561, 22 ; their numbers at 
beginning of religious wars, 
25 ; unequally distributed 26 ; 
believed to be in the ascend- 
ant, 29 ; attacked by the mob 
and refused justice in the 
courts, 33 ; challenged by the 
Guises, 35 ; vi^ere they right to 
begin the war ? 37 ; their 
strength and weakness, 39 et j 
seq. ; effect on the Protestant 
cause of the first eight years of 
war, 60 ; close connection of 
their fortunes with those of 
Protestants elsewhere, 71 ; 
massacred unresistingly, 82 ; 
a more popular party after St. 
Bartholomew's day, 96 ; en- 
couraged by successful resist- 
ance of La Rochelle, 98 ; as- 1 
sisted by Politicians, 99 ; form j 
a confederation with them in 
Languedoc, 102 ; more and 
more confined to certain prov- 
inces,. 103; obtain favourable 
terms by the Peace of " Mon- 
sieur," 109 ; consequent re- 
action, III, 113; hold aloof 
from the States-General of 
1576, 116 ; obtained reason- 
able tenns in the Peace of 



Bergerac, 127 ; the League 
excite the people against her- 
esy, 143 ; Edict of Toleration 
revoked (1586), 148; prospects 
of the Huguenots in the strug- 
gle, 149 et seq. ; joint mani- 
festo of Protestants and Poli- 
ticians, 152 ; assembly at La 
Rochelle, 175; treaty with the 
Royalists, 177 ; their policy, 
183 ; Huguenot Valois decis- 
ive at Arques, 200 ; careless of 
constitutional reforms, 315 ; 
the discontented majority re- 
fuse to help the King to retake 
Amiens, 321 ; their grievances 
against the King unfounded, 
330 et seq. ; he did all that he 
could for them by the Edict of 
Nantes, 337 ; their organisa- 
tion and power, 343 ; their 
distribution, numbers, and un- 
popularity, 344 et seq. ; refuse 
to support Bouillon against 
the King, 422 ; popular feel- 
ing excited against them, 449 

Provence, 27, 286, 288, 344 

Provins, 223, 356 

Pyrenees, 45. 



Quebec, 358 
Quercy, 130 



R 



Rabelais, 377 

Ravaillac, 455 et seq. 

Renee of France, Duchess of 
Ferrara, 11 

Rheims, 205, 234, 273 

Richelieu, 265 

Ronsard, 91, 377 

Rose, Bishop of Senlis, 255 

Rosne, Marshal de, 311, 312 

Rosny, Maximilian de Bethune, 
Baron of (Duke of Sully), his 
education and character, 122, 



Index. 



477 



cf. 348 ; reputation, 125 ; 
advises Henry IV. to conform, 
258 ; negotiates surrender of 
Rouen, 276 ; vainly attempts 
financial reforms, 309 ; finds 
funds necessary for siege of 
Amiens, 320 ; reorganises the 
finances, 348 ; his dignities 
and rewards, 349 ; exposes 
peculation, 350 ; not a revolu- 
tionist, 352 ; improves roads 
and plans canals, 353 ; a free- 
trader, 354 ; believes in sumpt- 
uary laws, 355 ; improves in- 
cidence of tallage, 358 ; tries 
to make publicans disgorge, 
360 ; systematises the sale of 
legal appointments, 362 ; finan- 
cial result achieved, 363 ; his 
memoirs not to be trusted, 383 ; 
hated Gabrielle d'Estrees, ib. ; 
fails to induce Biron to confess, 
406 ; opposes the readmission 
of the Jesuits, 411 ; the inven- 
tor of the " Grand Design," 
412 ; sent as ambassador to 
James I,, 414 ; his good ad- 
vice after flight of Conde, 441 

Roucy, Count of, 374 

Rouen, 26, 62, 173, 203, 234, 
236, 238 (siege of), 241 et seq., 
275, 3^5, 338, 356 

Rudolf, Emperor, 429 



Sadolet, it 
Saluzzo, 399 
Sancy, 187, 290, 383 
Saumur, 108, 177 
Sauves, Madame de, 128 
Savoy, Charles Emmanuel, Duke 
of, 102, 225, 364, 399 et seq., 

417, 433, 435 
Saxony, 430 
Scaliger, Joseph, 56, 348, 358, 

372 
Schomberg, Count of, 207 
Schomberg, Count of Nanteuil, 

334 



Sebastian of Portugal, 61 

Sedan, 409, 423 

Segur, 459 

Senlis, 107 

Serres, Olivier de, 358 

Sforza, Francis, 276 

"Sixteen," the, 162, 234, 248, 

277 

Sixtus v., 153, 225 

Smith, Adam, 359 

Spinola, 415, 423, 442, 451 

Soissons, Charles of Bourbon, 
Count of, 125, 156, 387 

Sorbonne, see University of 
Paris 

Stafford, Sir E., 161 

States-General of 1561, 22; of 
1576, 116, 126 ; of 1588, 168 ; 
abortive meeting at Rheims, 
234; of 1593, 251, 269; un- 
popularity of States-General, 

314 
St. Andre, Marshal, 25, 33, 41 
St. Bartholomew^ massacre of, 

78 et seq. ; account given by 

French Court, 93 
St. Denis, battle of, 41, 218, 

264, 451 
St. Germains, Peace of, 59 
St. Germains, Palace of, 368 
St. Jean d'Angeli, siege of, 57 
St. Luc, 278 

St. Pol, Count of, 303, 311, 317 
Sully, see Rosny 
Suresne, 254 
Sv^^iss, 155, 180, 208, 211, 227, 

236, 245, 302 



Tassis, 241 
Tavannes, 74, 77 
Teligny, 73, 76 
Thouars, Duchess of, 397 
Thouars, Duke of, see La Tre> 

moille 
Toledo, Don Pedro of, 426 
Toleto, Cardinal, 269, 305 
Touchet, Marie, 389 



zi")^ y 



478 



Index. 



Toulouse, 27, 131, 173, 225, 286 ; 
Parliament of, 341 

Tournon, Cardinal, 211 

Tours, 285 

Trent, Council of, 269, 416 

Turenne, Viscount of, Duke of 
Bouillon, 128, 150, 212, 221, 
233, 236, 261, 290, 297, 299, 
303, 335, 369. 376, 402, 403, 
409 

Tuscany, Grand Duke of, 310, 
388 

U 

University of Paris, the judge of 
orthodoxy, 2, 3, 6 ; declares 
that incompetent princes may 
be deposed, 162 ; that Henry 
III. has forfeited the Crown, 
172 ; that Henry IV. is in- 
capable of reigning even 
though absolved by the Pope, 
217; no students, 224 ; recants, 
285 ; quarrel M^ilh the Jesuits, 
293 ; reformed, 372 

Usson, castle of, 380 

V 
Vassy, massacre of, 34 



Velasco, Don Fernan de, 299 et 

seq. 
Vendome, Cardinal of, 138 
Vendome, Caesar, Duke of, 297, 

308, 328, 382 
Vendome, Charles, Count of, 44 
Venice, 202, 305, 416, 433, 435, 

447 
Vere, Sir Francis, 415 
Verneuil, Marchioness of, see 

Henriette 
Vervins, Peace of, 327, 399, 412 
Vielleville, Marshal, 41 
Villars, 238, 241, 270, 275,. 303, 

304 
Villeroy, 121, 189, 194, 205, 

213, 221, 235, 252, 266, 383, 

4r7, 440, 449 
Vitry, 270 

W 

Walsingham, 61, 71, 74, 120, 

233 
Wurtemberg, Christopher, Duke 

of, 34 



Zamet, 386 
Zw^ingli, 4 




V 










I 




